'darkly,deeply beautiful blue'

Oh! `darkly, deeply, beautifully blue', / As someone somewhere sings about the sky.
Lord Byron

Just outside the back door, flitting in a tangled thicket, the most beautiful warblers with hues of blue and many of yellow. Absolutely amazing, what a colorful wake up to a morning in Maine.


The striking Black-Throated Blue Warbler is one of the most common breeding songbirds in the extensive northern hardwood and mixed deciduous/coniferous forests of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.

In summer in the Appalachian Mountains, its buzzy zoo zoo zoo zee song can often be heard drifting from dense stands of rhododendron and mountain laurel. As the naturalist Lynds Jones wrote in 1899,

"The song is uttered in a spirited manner while the bird is feeding and flitting about in the foliage, interfering with his feeding only as a sort of after-thought, causing a momentary pause as the bird raises his head and straightens his body for the effort. It is one of the warbler songs that is easily recognized and not readily forgotten."


Blue Throated Black Warbler

Black Throated Green Warbler

For the Record,
This day came in with fog, burning off to sunshine and perfect late summer temperatures.