I Am Not a Twitcher But...

... I do like to photograph the birds. (I think I read that sentence on someone else's journal recently and I have shamelessly stolen it).

I never understood the fascination that warblers hold for birders - small, secretive, hard-to-identify birds with peculiar names that inhabit uncomfortable places like swamps. (If they were elements, they'd be the lanthanides.) However, today I may have got a glimpse. I was out on my walk, photographing (ahem) bark (I love birch bark) when I could hardly fail to notice a colourful little chap that I'd never seen before, perched a few feet away. So I took a snap or two (for identification purposes) and as he fluttered away I followed him. Then I noticed another... and another... all colourful and all different! In the end, I went and sat down by a likely looking perch on our little pond and waited for the birds to come to me. So here we have (I'm pretty sure) four different species of warbler, all perched on the same bit of fallen tree branch. None of them are the original bird, which turned out to be an American Redstart. (Unlike the European Redstart, which is a flycatcher, the American Redstart is a true New World warbler.)

Thanks to Google, here are my tentative ids.

Top left: Cape May Warbler
Top right: Not sure, possibly a yellow-rumped warbler, immature or female
Bottom left: Palm Warbler
Bottom right: Northern Parula

The Cape May and Palm Warblers are on their migration north; the Northerm Parula probably is too. None of these three are definitive enough to make it into my Birds of Wisconsin field guide, so I was lucky to see them and they may well be gone by tomorrow. The redstart and the yellow-rumped warbler should be here all summer. Who knew that our humble little pond was on a warbler migration path?

Polk County, Wisconsin