A species I don’t get a lot of chances with.
1/1600, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in
Yesterday morning in the mountains I had a few opportunities with this young MacGillivray’s Warbler. I screwed at least one of them up because of operator error (I need to remember where my lens limiter is set) but I did manage to get a few fairly decent shots, including this one. I’m not happy with the shadow on the tail but otherwise I like the photo.
1/1000, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in
But I like this one better.
For some reason I keep wanting to call this species Nashville Warbler instead of MacGillivray’s Warbler. Another thing I need to remember is the broken or incomplete white eye ring (white eye crescents or arcs) of this species compared to the complete eye ring of the Nashville Warbler.
I’m always happy to get a MacGillivray’s Warbler in my viewfinder. During migration and on their breeding grounds they’re elusive enough, and their distribution is remote enough, for them to be known by birders as a “trophy species”.
Trophy or not I think they’re great little birds.
Ron
Next time can you take a photo with a little more detail? Kidding, of course; the feather patterns are wonderful. Eye catch, eye ring, eye-popping.
“Next time can you take a photo with a little more detail”
I’m glad you noticed, Lyle. Thanks..
A good looking youngster! 🙂
Yup.
Feathered enchantment.
Works for me.
When I started teaching ornithology over 40 years ago, this species was common enough that I expected every student to know it by sight and by song. It certainly wasn’t as common as Song Sparrow or Spotted Towhee, but only Orange-crowned Warbler was a more common warbler. Over the last 15 years or so we rarely saw or heard these birds. Its absence was very noticable and disconcerting to me. They are still present but one has to seek them out more deliberately.
Dan, what you said makes me wonder if they were more common around here back then too. I wasn’t photographing birds back then so I have no idea.
A trophy I’m sure I’ll never earn…but glad that you could capture some nice photos so we can enjoy their adorbler-ness and learn some ID tips. Otherwise I might confuse this bird with an Orange-crown if he landed in my yard…most warblers (except Yellow-rumps and Wilson’s) keep me guessing! 🙄
Chris, I also photographed an Orange-crowned Warbler yesterday morning. Because it was a young bird I first thought it was a juvenile Green-tailed Towhee (color on crown and greenish on the dorsal side). I make a lot of ID mistakes in the field with some of the songbirds.
They ARE cute little birds – getting one to hold still long enough for an ID would be a challenge….. 😉 Glad you could capture it even with and initial “user error” challenge…..
Actually got down to 61 last night to cool the house off! 🙂
Thanks, Judy. Our low this morning was 61 too, at least at my house. Downtown is nearly always 5-10° warmer.
Beautiful. And thanks for the id tips. We had what I think was a mature Nashville Warbler hit a window this spring and it took me forever to id it. I still said “either/or” till you pointed out the broken eye-ring on Macgillivray’s. Ours had a complete, if narrow, ring. We’d never had a Nashville here before. At least not one I saw.
Thanks, Sallie. I need to pay more attention to my own ID tips. Yesterday I thought this bird was a Nashville Warbler until I was corrected.
Excellent photos Ron. Have never seen one although they are shown here to be common during transitions. Are they fairly elusive? Right now we have two very uncommon visitors who are close to impossible to see – a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and a Yellow-breasted Chat. You can hear both, but rarely do they ever make an appearance. Local birders are urged not to do anything to try to draw them out. One photographer friend was very fortunate to get a photo of the Cuckoo during one of its rare appearances. And of course there is a highly skilled Cooper’s Hawk very present in that area.
Everett, yes – very elusive. That’s part of the reason why birders sometimes refer to them as a “trophy species”.
Ron – after posting my first response I was curious about who the bird was named for so looked up MacGillivray. He was a Scottish naturalist who Audubon named the bird for. So here again we have a bird named not for the person who discovered it, but an honorary naming for a friend by the person who did discover it. I know very little about Audubon, but from what I have read it appears that he named quite a few birds for friends and fellow naturalists.
I’m not surprised.
Yes there are many reasons for considering this species as a trophy species. First, this species is absent from our official list in Quebec. Second, this bird is so stealthy that it can easily go unnoticed. During a trip to the west coast of Mexico, we rented a house for two weeks. Three days went by without my noticing that a MacGillivray’s Warbler was standing in the bushes right next to the house. It is a fabulous species and your photos are magnificent considering the fact of the stealth of the species.
Thanks, Laval. I understand that they’re fairly common on their breeding grounds but even then they’re very hard to find because they’re so elusive.