A Rarity Brings Me to 138

A nice leisurely walk with Lily at the Moss Creek Nature Trail this morning got me 2 life/big year birds, bringing me to 138 species identified year-to-date. Fall migration is in full swing, and today it yielded a pair of uncommon wood-warblers. The first one I spotted was the more rare, a Golden-winged Warbler. The one I saw was a female, and she flitted around in easy view of the path for a couple of minutes, leaving no doubt in my mind of her identity. Still, when I reported it to eBird I got the "Are you sure, that's a great sighting" message, so I started to second-guess myself. A double check of my field guides and my memory and I'm confident still that's what I saw.

The second new species came at the other end of the trail, very high up in the trees. Lucky for me, this is precisely the habitat the field guide told me to expect it in, so I again feel very good about the ID. It was a Yellow-throated Warbler, although at that distance it's difficult to say whether it was a male or a female.

I'm very sorry to not have pictures of either of these two birds to share, as staying focused through the binoculars took priority with them. I'll leave you with a couple shots from our walk, however. One silly arty one I took of Lily, the other of an Empidonax flycatcher I couldn't ID because it wasn't calling or singing. Any guesses? The feature you get the best view of in this photo is the primary projection, which I'm judging to be fairly long (almost halfway down the tail). That makes me lean toward Acadian Flycatcher. Imagine my best Homer Simpson immitation (which isn't very good) . . "Stupid fall, why do you have to make birds stop singing??"