Mother's Day Birding and Yellow Warbler Study

Skip and I went birding at Thickson's Woods again yesterday. I got some great pics of a male yellow warbler. Of course the main diagnostic is that it's primarily all yellow with slightly darker wings.

The adult male has reddish streaks on its chest

This wren's identity has eluded me for days. It doesn't lift its tail when it sings. It doesn't have much of an 'eyebrow'. It's bill isn't very curved. Skip thought it was a house wren but it didn't look exactly like the one in the bird guide.

I got a really good picture of it yesterday. Once home, I loaded the image into Google images and immediately got the response that it was indeed a 'house wren'.

This Baltimore oriole found a virtual smorgasbord of midges caught in a spider's web. He feasted there for quite a while.

Back in the woods at the 'corner', a redstart worked the trees for a long time. It was very active so this is the only good shot I got. Sibley defines it as a 'small, long-tailed warbler'. The bright markings make it easy to spot.

Walking down the lane to the lake (Ontario) a couple of flotillas of mergansers were enjoying the sun and the fish.

The white stripe on the neck is the diagnostic for a red-breasted merganser.

Male red-breasted merganser

Back in the woods, the fiddleheads are emerging.

We wondered how someone thought to try and eat one the first time.

In a few weeks, they'll be beautiful ferns.

On the path was this very small butterfly. It was about 1.5cm in diameter and, although washed out in this photo, a beautiful light blue.

Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon)

Back at home, Google images told me it was a Spring Azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon). The inside of the wings is a little darker but it didn't cooperate and open its wings so I could get a good shot.

We only have a couple more weeks of birding opportunities before the leaves are too full to get good sightings.