24 September 2013. Talk about a study in contrasts! Book-ending the day were the warbler that no-one ever knowingly sees and the falcon that is the avian standard bearer for everything swift and powerful.
Orange-crowned Warbler: It was with only a little tongue-in-cheek that I called it the warbler that no-one ever knowingly sees. The thing is, this bird is the quintessential “I’ve no idea what that is” warbler. I think when the Creator fashioned the prototype warbler, it was the Orange-crowned. Seeing it, the Creator thought, “Well, we’ll have to do better than that if we’re to avoid repeating the Old World Warbler debacle. We need to add marks and decorations, some flamboyance, some details that separate and distinguish the dozens of species on the drawing board, one from the other.” So with a splash of blue/grey here, a wash of yellow there, some bold black eye-liner and liberal use of white wing-bars, such splendors as the Canada, Magnolia and Black-throated Blue Warblers and a host of others came about. Unfortunately the Orange-crowned Warbler was already out of the bag so to speak and although they rightly own a part of warblerdom; they are a reminder of the Old World Warbler mistakes.
We encountered an Orange-crowned Warbler at the bird observatory today. I took first look at it and pursed my lips in that sideways manner that suggests the interrogative Hmmm. I passed it to my colleague who did much the same thing but at least offered up some ideas: Tennessee Warbler? – No, Nashville Warbler?- No, female Black-throated Blue? – No, too small. Could it be an Orange Crowned? We checked the books, inspected the undertail coverts, agreed on eye-ring details and thought maybe that’s what it was. Still we referred it to the man in charge who initially and tentatively proclaimed Tennessee Warbler. We begged to differ, and in the bright light of day we were at last able to find some, just a couple, of little orange feathers on its crown. So Orange-crowned Warbler it was, and to do it justice, it is a cute little bird. Here’s a couple of pictures of it.
Then much later in the day, I decided to see if there were any shorebirds to be found on the shores of a lake where the water level is falling and exposing mudflats. There weren’t any, but I and another idler enjoyed telescope views of Great Egrets pacing delicately and deliberately along the reedy margins looking closely for something cold, wet and slippery to spear. Without warning there was an abrupt explosion of anxiety and we turned to see a young Peregrine Falcon take a close pass at a Green-winged Teal that moments earlier had been sitting quietly minding its own puddle-duck business. The falcon failed to make contact but soared up in a wide arc in front of us, turning to show its brown streaked body and the classic long and wide pointed wings that could only say Peregrine. In a roller coaster move it stooped for the second time taking a swipe at another small group of ducks, again without making contact. It swerved away behind a small island and I thought it had left us but moments later it streaked past for the second and last time before vanishing behind a bend in the river.
You’d have to be pretty jaded not to be stopped in your tracks by a Peregrine Falcon, they are, to use a hopelessly overdone word, an icon. If icons are touchstones, symbols, points of reference and reverence and all of that, then Peregrines qualify. Hard not, then, to make it Bird of the Day. But on the sublime to the ridiculous scale, so too must the Orange-crowned warbler qualify. They were both really cool birds.