Montrose

So I went to Montrose Harbor last weekend in the morning for the first time. Due to the fact that it was nice weather and spring and morning (apparently) there were probably 40 or so people there with binoculars. I was a bit intimidated. :) There were, of course, 8 gabillion red-winged blackbirds (more on that later). But also just a TON of warblers. And see, the thing about warblers is they Don't. Stay. Still. ...Ever. Taking pictures of warblers is an exercise in futility. But I did get a few pics :) Also, I think these are just the second time I've posted pictures taken with the new lens converter and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I discovered the wonder of the "high speed burst" setting on my camera. I don't think the Megapixels are as high, but at least the birds aren't blurry.

Here's most of what I spent my day looking at: This guy sat still for me at the end of the day for me. I believe he is an Alder or Willow Flycatcher.

I ADORE this shot. It's a Black and White Warbler. (I had this down as a White-Breasted Nuthatch, but after looking at it's markings, that didn't seem right. Nuthatches have a flatter body and less of a neck. But when I observed this bird, it was creeping along the tree like a Nuthatch/Creeper, hence the ID. So I looked up the B&W Warbler in the book, and apparently that behavior is common in the B&W as well since they also eat insects out of the bark.)

Gray Catbird. You can just barely see the rufous/red color on his rump. Or, in this case, I think maybe this is a her. I mean, she's really fat, so I imagine she's maybe got some buns in the oven.

OK. Storytime. As I said, the Red-Winged Blackbirds were just everywhere. Also, those suckers are loud! They chirp, and they make these weird chattering gutteral sounds and they chase each other and are just really, really loud. So, as I also said, it was a bit intimidating being around all these other more experienced birders and I was trying to behave in a professional and appropriate manner. I was just sure that all these people could see right through me and knew I hadn't a clue what I was doing. So I finally found a little part of the trail by the magic hedge that was kind of empty. And a female Red-Winged Blackbird (RWB from here on out) flew over my head and perched on a tree about 10 feet in front of me. And I was bemused by how lovely it was to have all these birds just flying about. Ah, communing with nature. Then she let out a loud squawk and came flying right back to where she came from. Well, she was kind of bearing down on me right down the trail, and I thought, oh she just doesn't see me, she'll lift up here in a minute. No, really, just another second. Oh crap, she's gunning for me!!! At which point I let out a loud shriek and went running off the trail. In front of all those much more experienced birders than me. It was humbling. So then for the rest of the day every time I would surprise some stupid RWB hiding in the grasses I would duck or jerk away because I was sure I was about to be attacked. Fun times. This isn't the exact little lady that chased me around. This one was much nicer and posed for me for a while.

This is a Magnolia Warbler. I spent the better part of an hour trying to get a good shot of him.

Hopefully this shot makes up for my 2 abysmal shots of Northern Flickers from a few weeks ago. These normally very shy birds just came up and perched on a fence post for me. It was great!
Just look for the reddish-orange eye. The poor Killdeer just couldn't get away from me.
These are Caspian Terns. I spent the better part of an hour trying to determine whether these birds were Caspian or Fosters or Common Terns last year when I first started birding. Funny thing about bird books, they show the proportions of all the birds as the same. Turns out that Caspian Terns are literally twice the size of Commons or Fosters (saw a picture of some together, the commons look like the Caspians mini-me's).
This is a female American Redstart. I have a picture of the male too, but I didn't like it enough to post. The male has the same pattern, except he's black where she's gray, and orange where she's yellow.
In addition to the above, here's the rest of the list for the day:

Wilson's Warbler

Palm Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Barn Swallow

Chimney Swift

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Eastern Towhee

Black and White Warbler

White throated Sparrow

White-Crowned Sparrow

Ovenbird

Robin

American Goldfinch

Cardinal

And here's my list of unconfirmed IDs:

Northern Parula

Baltimore Oriole

Spotted Sandpiper

Indigo Bunting

And last story: While I was looking around at the end of the morning, I got a little "pssst" from a fellow birder. I went over to him and he said that he just wanted to let me know that there was a "morning" over in that part of the park. We talked about the warblers a bit and what we'd seen, and I had to try and concentrate really hard to try and understand him because he was talking in birding shorthand and because there are probably 30+ types of warblers so people just call them by the descriptive word, not putting "warbler" on the end (I didn't realize that at the time). So after he left, I thought to myself, what is a "morning"? He wasn't talking about "Mourning Dove's" was he? I mean, I see those all the time! So I looked up birds in the index and decided that maybe he had said "Moorhen". Well a moorhen is like a rail that lives in marshland. So I didn't really think that was it, but I proceeded to go up and down this trail for another half hour looking on the ground, just in case. Once I got home, I realized he meant "morning warbler" after looking it up on my birding website but I was just so confused, and also, too proud to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about because I was so flattered that he was giving me advice and treating me like a real birder! :) I'm silly. If I see him again, I might have to 'fess up. :)