I arrived at the park around 9:30am today and had decided on taking my portable stool with me in the hopes I might find another hotspot for bird watching. Looking back at my blog, it has been almost a year to the day since I had seen the Scarlet Tanager on the ground along the wood chip trail on the southwest side. So I headed to this area just in case he decided to show up again. But before I got there I did a lap around both of the baseball fields on the west side in hopes of maybe seeing a Savannah Sparrow that another birder had spotted yesterday.
No such luck there but I did run into a very brave little Tree Swallow who stayed put despite me coming up to within just feet of him. Tree Swallows have been around for some time now but this is my first good photo of one this season. Also perched on the chain link fencing were a pair of Eastern Bluebirds. I can almost count on seeing Bluebirds near these baseball fields for the past few years at least. I tried to get close to the male but he quickly scared off and flew to cover in the edge of the woods just beyond the outfield. Here he didn't mind me as much.
It was the exact same tree where I'd photographed the male last year –and for all I know it
might even be the very same bird! Later while scouring the wood chip trail for any possible signs of a Tanager, I could hear two different Great Crested Flycatchers calling to each other. They sounded very close so I was hoping I might get a photo but when I finally found one, I was directly underneath it and facing into the sun. This is a particularly interesting and colorful bird so I'm hoping I get more opportunities to see them this season. I finally parked on my stool here, far enough back into the woods where nobody on the trail might see me. I thought about how it wont be long before mosquitoes make it much harder to just sit in one place for a while. I really wasn't seeing anything here so I ended up moving further down the trail and sitting along the water way that connects the two western most bodies of water. Here I saw a Great Blue Heron but it scared off quickly before I got a photo. But in the Buckthorn ahead to my left I caught a glimpse of a small bird moving around quickly like a Warbler. I couldn't tell quite what it was but suspected that maybe it was a Tennessee Warbler. It had somewhat drab coloring the way Tennessee's do but when it finally presented itself in a clearing, I appeared more like a Vireo.
But again it didn't quite look like a Vireo that I am familiar with. I wondered if it was maybe a female or juvenile until I got home and looked in my
Stokes field guide. The bird that looked most similar was a Warbling Vireo –something I've not positively identified before. I went one extra step in confirming my suspicion, by posting my photo on the
Minnesota Birding facebook page, where a couple of other birders agreed. This was kind of exciting as it's been some time now since I've come across a new species at the park! Indeed with bird watching, there is always more to learn. Later I went to the very end of the wood chip trail specifically to photograph the Marsh Marigold that I noticed flowering yesterday. I don't know a whole lot about this plant, other than the habitat and time of year to find it. I did learn though today from the
Minnesota Wildflowers website, that the plant is also known as "cowslip."
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