A warbler at last…

It did turn into a pretty morning, but it started out pretty grey. There is nothing new to report at the pond, which is good news as this point. Both geese were incubating at their respective ends of the island, and a third couple appear to have given up for the season. Well, two out of three is still two times better than last year.

At the river, I spotted a solo blue-winged teal drake off the mudflats with a pair of mallards. Here he is cutting in front of the mallard hen. With that face, I guess we should expect that he’d be cheeky, eh?

Here he is just chilling and cutting in front of anybody.

Just above the falls, I spotted the solo red-breasted merganser hen or immature male.

At the north end, the kingfishers toyed with me, and I didn’t even try today. Instead I found this guy who appears for all the world to be a male brown-headed cowbird, perhaps searching for that female we saw last Sunday.

While I was looking up, this Cooper’s hawk took off and climbed through a couple of lazy circles before heading west.

Finally, still at the north end, I spotted at long last our first warbler for the season. I’ve been hearing of sightings for a couple of weeks now, but this is the first one I’ve been able to capture in an image. It is a male yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata) in “Myrtle” plumage, on his way to breeding grounds that start upstate and continue to Hudson Bay.

He was very busy mining this tree for bugs and just about a nimble as a chickadee or a kinglet. It took me forever to get even these half-way decent shots.