And there were warblers (and woodcock, and watersnakes, and Westerns, and buntings, and jaegers and...)

"For most birdwatchers, the coming of the warblers has the same effect as catnip on a cat"

ArlineThomas      

As I lowered my windows, dropped from 50 to a bird cruising speed, but before I silenced the car radio and turned down Pine Swamp Road (one of the most evocative, if not accurate road names I've ever come across) into the depths of Belleplain State Forest, a Worm-eating Warbler gave its insect- like trill. Then a Black & White Wee-see-wee-see-wee-seed, and an Ovenbird teacherTeacher!TEACHER!!ed.

Three "Year Birds" in one turn. This is going to be a good day I thought. And it was. Very good. Better than that even.

Belleplain did not disappoint. As I pulled to my favorite parking spot and got out for a walk, a Blue-headed Vireo was giving his mellow, sweet, yet otherwise Viresque in the phrasing song and plucking caterpillars from the new foliage. (Bent tells us that Lepidoptera larvae make up the vast bulk of the stomach contents of Blue-heads. My observations over the years tell me he is on the money with that one, as with most ones.) A Hooded Warbler was weta-weta-weTEE-O-ing from the Mountain Laurels beneath the White Cedars, just where he should be.

I was soon into the double digits for Worm-eating, Black & White and Ovenbird. A Wood Thrush or two was channeling the ether into the sylvan plane with Ee-o Leee...Ee-o Laaayyy.  And though busy with nesting at this point, nearly a month after their arrivals, Yellow-throated and Pine Warblers were still singing, though not nearly with the fervor of the newer emigres.

And it was only 7:15.

With a dramatic "Whooo-EEEK!!" a Pair of Wood Ducks came hurtling down the road, right at eye level, and right towards my face. Neat! I thought, they're using the road like a stream-right of way.

Then the desperation in their voices hit, and as they veered up, behind them the white flash of the underparts of a stalled/failed swoop/stoop of the Red-tail who was the cause of their panic ended his hot pursuit and in one deft motion aborted the chase, and landed on an oak limb, shaking his tail and shifitng his weight, cat-like in his desire to look nonchalant. Those weren't the ducks he was looking for. And besides, the kids prefer red meat to poultry. He didn't really want those Wood Ducks, anyway...

SWEET-SWEET-SWEET Prothonotaries sang from the lake edge, and CHEE-CHEE-CHEE-tittiWE-onetoomany came the Song of a Louisiana Waterthrush, delivered from on high, where one would never expect a ground dwelling Warbler named after a wagtail (he is Parkesia motacila to taxonomists) to want to sing. (Thanks Janet! He was right where you said he was this year.)

I hope from the descriptions of songs above you're realizing that I was actually seeing very few these critters. True to their Neotropical nature, they were much more readily heard than seen, and truth be told, I didn't try too hard. I was happy in just hearing the conversation of old friends.

Duskywings danced in the dappled dirt tracks, and effervescent Elfins; Brown, Eastern Pine, and Henry's, were just about anywhere I looked.

From Belleplain it was on to Heislerville, and this little guy stopped me on the way. 

 My first, and most likely only Spotted Turtle  (Clemmys guttata) of 2012. And while I am loathe to say it, this has got to be the dingiest, ugliest Spotted Turtle I've ever seen! He was in an area with heavily iron stained red-muddy water, and what should be an onyx black carapace was coffee stained, though you can still make out the solitary yellow-orange spot in each scute. And don't be fooled by his size, this is as big as they get. I say most likely my only, as Spotted Turtles are most active in Spring. They aesitvate in the heat of summer.

In stopping to get him off the side of the road, my good deed was repaid. A Black-throated Green Warbler, another first for the year, started singing from the woods right over head. Zee-zee-zee-zo-zee. Pines, Pines, sweet-scented Pines. What comes around...

And while the waders proper were a bust at the impoundments, the true highlight of an ever better day, and indeed a life sighting if not a life bird nevertheless came form the shorebird department.

Driving back from East Point Lighthouse, a hit the brakes and backed up, cause in the shadows was the distinctive, kiwi-like silhouette  of a Woodcock. What waited at the spot blew my mind. Not a Woodcock, but three still downy fledgelings with their dam. In 35 years of birding, I have never seen a baby woodcock, and never really expected too.

there are three baby American Woodcock in this photo

and a close-up

The proud mother

The entire family of four is in this one, one just the face at left.

 The family made a leisurely retreat, in their peculiar metronome gait. So I stopped to look.
 I assumed they would be long gone, but instead they crouched and trusted in their camouflage. And  now I know why.

Woodcock in defensive posture. Mother at left, chick immediately behind

crouching Woodcock chick

un-zoomed. The mother is just right of dead center, the chick behind. The other two babies are in this photo, but I've no idea where!

Close up of the crouching mother Woodcock

My day, my year could have ended right there, and I would have been a satiated birder.

But on to Bivalve where my first Indigo Bunting of the year sat in a low Groundsel Tree bush, like an animated bit of lapis lazuli from the great trunk road, lost en route to a mortar and pestle in some Venetian studio and determined to fly there and to ultramarine immortality in the virgin's robe, if that's what it took. By his color he had the chops, he did.

Fittingly such perfection eluded my little point and shoot. But pause for a moment  to admire a Field Sparrow instead.

Field Sparrow

Beaver Dam road revealed no frog-plucking Gull-billed Terns, yet, but My first Northern Parula and Northern Watersnake of the year were there in the afternoon heat.

Stone Harbor and Nummy Island turned up three Western Sandpipers, among the hordes of Dunlin, and increasing numbers of Short-billed Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plovers. Willets, faithful to their mates and their sites were already setting up shop, and two electric blue-billed, powder blue aigretted, and deep purple necked Little Blue Herons stalked mummichogs (killifish) in the Spartina. And while others of their number are sitting on or building nests elswhere onthe continent, a flock of ten clearly newly arrived Great Blues were resting where they apparently fell after their last water crossing. They must be headed far north indeed.

 a flock of ten Great Blue Herons s rests on the east side of Nummy's Island. Stone Harbor Point in the background. 

And as if a day of fifteen year birds and a life phenomenon were not good enough, sunset at South Cape May Meadows resulted in my first Parasitic Jaegers of 2012, somersaulting, barrel-rolling and flipping in the rips as they tried to steal an other's already stolen fish from one another, again and again.

Apologies for the long-windedness, but it is not every day that the Warblers come back.

Happy Spring.