No Warblers but a Rare Bird Indeed!

Lately I've been spending a LOT of time at another park –Silverwood Park in St. Anthony. With the daylight hours dwindling rapidly this time of year, this park is close enough for me to get to quickly after work and allows me as much daylight as possible to watch and photograph birds. At this park I've been seeing tons of Palm and Yellow-rumped Warblers, as well as a few Nashville and Tennessee Warblers. So this morning I was excited to go to Palmer Lake Park and maybe see more of the same. A couple of friends of mine had tallied 10 species of Warblers just days ago but alas I did not see a single one this morning. I wonder if maybe it's already too late in the year? I should note that it was exceptionally warm today in the 80's which may have played a factor. Nonetheless, I was keeping my eyes peeled and after a fairly uneventful walk, I finally stumbled across a bird that got me quite excited. It might be the second most rare bird I've seen in the park and I even submitted it to moumn.org which is the Minnesota Ornithologists' Union website. The bird I found was a Red-headed Woodpecker, a bird that has been in decline in Minnesota for quite some time due to it's preference for a preference for a very particular habitat called an "Oak Savanna." An Oak Savanna is essentially a "lightly forested grassland where Oaks are the dominant trees." I've been to Oak Savannas before, some of them being found in our many Minnesota State Parks. In fact my one and only (previous) sighting of a Red-head Woodpecker was during a special trip to an area of Oak Savanna in East Bethel, MN. So needless to say, spotting this bird at Palmer Lake Park –a mostly wetland– was especially surprising. I first noticed the bird in a very tall, dead tree on the northwest side of the park, near the edge of the cattails. In fact I hadn't a clue what it was until I put my camera lens on it and spotted the bright red head. I almost couldn't believe my eyes. I quickly hiked through the tall grass, feeling the stinging nettles go right through my thin pants and worked my way closer to the tall tree. But as soon as I got into a good viewing area I looked up and the bird had gone. I waited for over 20 minutes and eventually saw another similarly colored bird creeping up the back side of one of the branches. I got excited again and had my camera ready but quickly found out that a Pileated Woodpecker had flown in and taken the Red-headed's place in the tree. Now a Pileated is still a fun treat to see anywhere but I was actually kinda bummed at this point. I really wanted to see that Red-headed again and get a better photo, but due to the rarity of this sighting to begin with, it was likely just moving through the area. Some of the other birds I spotted today were; White-throated Sparrows, Blue Jay, Gray Catbird, Black-capped Chickadee,  Downy Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Eastern Phoebe, Cooper's Hawk, Mallard, Wood Duck, Great Egret, American Crow, American Robin and Song Sparrow.