A Few More Warblers And Such

Hooded Warbler at Carpenters Woods. Photo by Ken Januski.

I had really planned on not taking any more warbler photos. But when we found a cooperative Hooded Warbler at Carpenters Woods in Philadelphia yesterday I had to try to get some photos, mainly just to document that we'd really seen him. They do breed throughout the rest of Pennsylvania but I believe that this is the first we have seen in the state.

Actually we saw it in three different locations at Carpenters Woods so it's possible that there was more than one. Today we saw what was undoubtedly a different one since it was about 5 miles away at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Oddly enough it was in the open with a Veery, Eastern Bluebird and Ovenbird, a very nice collection of very visible birds.

Though warblers have been visible in extraordinary numbers at Carpenters Woods this week we skipped it to bird SCEE. The main reason for this, outside of avoiding weekend crowds, is that we are covering SCEE next weekend for the Pennsylvania Migratory Bird Count. So we wanted to do some scouting of the area today. We did! 6.5 hours and we still missed much of it.

Blue-winged Warbler at Schuylkill Center. Photo by Ken Januski.

One of the best warblers we did see, outside of the second Hooded Warbler, was the Blue-winged Warbler pictured above. We re getting used to seeing them hidden in the blooms of Crabapple trees. That is the tree pictured above, though most of the blossoms have been cropped out. It is quite a scene though, the bright yellow of the warbler against the brilliant white of the crabapple blossoms.

Ovenbird at Carpenters Woods. Photo by Ken Januski.

One of the most visible warblers of the last few days has been the Ovenbird, an often maddeningly secretive species, though it is also an extremely loud species. I have many Ovenbird photos. But when they stroll so close to you, seemingly oblivious, it is hard to resist one more photo. I normally wouldn't show it but I needed something new to add to the two warbler photos above. And most of the other photos I've taken over last few days have been of warblers portrayed in the last post.

Scarlet Tanager at Schuylkill Center. Photo by Ken Januski.

Finally a non-warbler species: the Scarlet Tanager. How is it possible to miss this brilliant bird, especially given its loud distinctive call? Yet it is in fact a bird that's hard to find. The bird pictured above is the first we've seen this year.

We also saw our first of year Baltimore and Orchard Orioles today at SCEE but I've taken too many Baltimore Oriole photos to be lured into taking any more.

Outside of taking photos for documentation purposes I'll spend the rest of the migration of 2014 doing sketches rather than taking photos. I promise!