Yup, here it is. Warbler migration season again! Once again my major inadequacies as a birder are revealed. Another year still has not taught me the eye, the ear or the patience to try to spot fall warblers. They are all too small, too hidden, too similar, too confusing. They hide up the tops of the tree canopies where I can never see them or make them out. My only prayer of seeing them is in going with better birders than I who spot them, and hope they can be pointed out to me. But even when the other person says (quote from a birder I met on a Duval Audubon sponsored bird walk recently) "it's right THERE, just in the tree on the upper left branch in PLAIN SIGHT. It's IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS" I still usually can't even tell which tree or branch they mean, let alone see the bird! Heck I can be standing underneath a single, lone, 15-foot-tall tree and hear TONS of birds twittering in the branches and be incapable of seeing or IDing a single one of them.
Thanks goodness for little fellows like the cheery palm warbler above who will come out in public and show themselves in plain sight. I've seen quite a few palm warblers in the last week or two. :-)
Well, I also saw a black-and-white warbler all by myself - but only because I was with a couple birding friends who were desperately trying to point out the American redstart they were looking at to me. (Note, I eventually did see the American redstart, but who never have seen it on my own).
In the meantime I'm still waiting for my winter ducks! I have seen a couple blue-winged teals lately, one right here in Clay County, a County first for me. I've seen a couple coots also. The eBird bar charts indicate they are both around year-round but I only see them in the winter.
