Date of sighting: 21 June

Chautauqua was great this year, and I hope that Bartshe and/or Nora post what was seen.  If anyone has photographs of the Tennessee Warbler and Indigo Bunting at County Park, I’d love to beg you for a copy.

Here is the requisitely lame photograph of the Kentucky Warbler that Lenny Warren and I found singing on Rush Creek this morning.

I recognized that the heavy, repetitive song was a vagrant right away.  I am not good at typing out mnemonics, but it was basically a repeated two-note “chupa chupa chupa chupa” sort of thing, usually in groups of four or three.

It was just off the two-track, only 10 m or so away.  It continued to sing and slowly eased out of the shiny willow – yellow throat, yellow belly and undertail coverts, then the black cap, yellow eyeline, and black auricular patch.  The auricular seemed to be still coming in, making me think it could be a second-year bird.  I guess closest species would be Wilson’s Warbler and Hooded Warbler, but the face pattern and song were far different.

It was moving slowly and singing fairly constantly, at the edge of a wall of shiny willow, probably the gnarliest place on Rush.

In the photo, I used my lame photoshop skills to draw an arrow to its eye.

This post was submitted by Chris McCreedy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Birds. You can view No Responses on this post or leave your own response if you log in.