Thursday, September 4, 2008

Warblers!@!@??!


FINALLY,  this week I was able to take some time off from work to go birding!  As mentioned prior, time has not been on my side lately - between work, football, soccer, etc. most of the birding I have done lately has been through the windshield of my car!

Anyway, I have been to Eagle Creek Park 2x, Salamonie Reservoir, and Southwestway Park only to find that I have been more frustrated than relaxed mostly because of the one group of birds that we ALL love to identify - WARBLERS!  Now, I know that many of you tenured Birders might find this humorous, but these hyper little creatures had me cursing far more this week than any confession could attempt to neutralize!  

My typical Warbler sighting went something like this...  Look!  There's one! Where did it go! Up there! Behind the leaf! No behind the branch! The next tree! Got it! No I don't, it moved! It has some yellow on its... SHIT!  I can't find it!  Its gone... and, of course, the process repeats itself!

So, thus far this week, my confirmed Warbler sightings were - Prothonotary, Blue-winged, Common Yellowthroat, Black and White, Yellow, and Yellow-throated.  Unconfirmed sightings would be somewhere in the millions!

On a less frustrating note, I was able to add at least on  new lifer this week - Common Nighthawk.  I also stalked what I believe was a Winter Wren for sometime on the north side of Lilly Lake.

This takes me to my new life list total of 215!  I love birding!

1 comment:

Rob Ripma said...

It is great to see the perspective of a new birder during on of thier first fall migrations. Stick with it and the fall warblers will soon be much easier to identify. I was also at Eagle Creek on Sunday as well unfortunatly I didn't see you. In addition to the Marina, the area around the skating pond is also typically good in the fall.

Indiana State Bird

Indiana State Bird
Northern Cardinal