June 4 2012. If May is for migration, June is for nesting. And for me it’s time to get exploring new areas, or even re-visiting familiar country; there’s always something new and surprising. Today I revisited the stretch of countryside I discovered just a week or so ago, a longish walk that starts high and flanked by hay fields and ends deep in a dense, swampy woods. I took a group of birders along with me and promised them Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlarks, Savannah Sparrows, Northern Waterthrushes, Canada Warblers and Veerys. We got them all. Only the waterthrushes remained elusive and unseen, but they were singing loudly all around us. My Bird of the Day, because it was unexpected, was a Black and White Warbler. We heard one mid way through our walk, but the Black & White’s squeaky wheel song: a very high pitched “Seee-seee-seee-seee” is one of those tiny “I think I can hear” songs, and we couldn’t locate the bird..
However a little later I briefly left the path to investigate a possible Green Heron and found myself face to face with a Black and White Warbler anxiously flitting around on the lower branches of an Eastern White Cedar. It was quite possibly my closest ever encounter, brief but still conclusive. Here’s a picture of a Black and White Warbler photographed earlier this year (at some neck craning discomfort) from below.
