Yesterday I encountered the strangest-looking bird I have ever seen in the wild.
As I was marveling at the fact that some of the water surrounding the beaver pond at my local marshland park had not frozen despite multiple days of temperatures in the 20’s (minus 4-6 degrees C), I heard a sound in the water. Most of the birds that I had seen earlier in the day were sparrows, pecking away in the undergrowth, but it was clear that this was no sparrow.
The bird was standing in the shallow water and was bent over. When he withdrew his bill from the water, I was amazed at its length—it looked to be almost freakishly long. When I first looked at my images on the computer screen, I though of a recent posting of fellow blogger Calee in which she comment that an orchid she had photographed looked like a cartoon character. Truly, this bird looked like he could have been playing the role of Pinnochio.
I think that this bird is a Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata), judging from the information that I was able to find on the internet and in my Peterson’s guide. I really like the way that he blends in with the surroundings in which I found him. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology lists some fascinating facts about the bird’s extra-long bill, “The long bill of the Wilson’s Snipe is flexible. The tips can be opened and closed with no movement at the base of the bill. Sensory pits at the tip of the bill allow the snipe to feel its prey deep in the mud.”
It’s a bit early for the mating season, but it seems that the family life of the Wilson’s Snipes is as dysfunctional as that of some humans. According to the Cornell Lab, “The clutch size of the Wilson’s Snipe is almost always four eggs. The male snipe takes the first two chicks to hatch and leaves the nest with them. The female takes the last two and cares for them. Apparently the parents have no contact after that point.”
The range maps for this bird show that I am close to the northern edge of the wintering area for these migratory birds, so I am hoping that I’ll have a chance to see one again.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Warbler in December
Posted in Birds, commentary, Humor, Nature, Photography, Portraits, Winter, tagged Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, Cardellina pusilla, December, Huntley Meadows Park, warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Wilsonia pusilla on January 3, 2013| 15 Comments »
Birders, I’m finding out, are an excitable breed. Sometimes they travel in flocks and sometimes alone. You can often identify them by their binoculars and spotting scopes and sometimes their cameras with enormous camouflaged lenses. They have special apps on their smartphones and frequently can be observed with their heads buried in one of the numerous identification guides they may be carrying.
I encountered a very excited member of this species as I passed by the bird feeders at my local marshland park this past weekend. He had his camera—with a large lens and flash—set up on a tripod pointed at the feeder. Crouching in the shadows with a remote release in his hand, he was obviously waiting for something.
Before I could pose the obvious question, he asked me in a whisper if I also was there to photograph the Wilson’s Warbler. He must have mistaken me for one of his own kind, probably because I had a camera with a telephoto lens around my neck. I got the impression that this bird was rarely seen here and that word had circulated in birding circles of this find. Suddenly he snapped a few photos and went rushing off into the underbrush, saying that a fellow birders had alerted him that the bird had also been seen near one of the benches in the park. His closing words to me were that the warbler had been timed as coming back to the feeder every four to five minutes.
Caught up in the excitement, I waited near the feeder with my camera. The only problem was that I did not have a clue what a Wilson’s Warbler looked like. How was I going to photograph it if I couldn’t identify it? An assortment of Downy Woodpeckers and nuthatches arrived and departed at the feeder and I was beginning to despair that I would see this elusive bird, when all of the sudden I saw a flash of bright yellow. It was a small yellow bird, a welcome sight on a gray late December day, and over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so I attempted to take his picture.
When I arrived home, looked at my photographs on my computer, and did a little research, I realized that I had photographed a Wilson’s Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla or Cardellina pusilla). Judging from the range maps on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, Virginia is on the migratory path for these birds, which breed in the northern and western parts of North American and winter in the tropics.
I am not used to photographing birds at a feeder, but managed to get a few interesting shots of the Wilson’s Warbler. To avoid scaring off the bird, I was at a pretty good distance from the feeder, so I had to crop the images quite a bit. I am quite content, though, that I have managed to capture some of the essence of this happy little bird.
Wilson’s Warbler Walking
Wilson’s Warbler Hovering
Wilson’s Warbler Feeding
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
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