I Love Lucy

It has been a good week around the Intrigued HQ. To kick things off we held what I believe to be our 4th Annual Intrigued Corporate Warbler Watch and Walk in the Woods event. Jan was busy organizing her St. Jude event at the local high school, but Brad was able to make it out along with Lisa, a fellow local birder who we met up while we were down in Texas – it really is a small world. We got some really good finds and had a great day walking the back trails at a nearby state park. This time managed to come back tick free unlike the week before when one of those hell spawn blood sucking heathens broke my defenses and started draining me of vital fluids. Follow that up with another outing with Brad to tin the Prairie Warbler for the year. Talking about calling your shot, Brad said it would be at this place and audible from the parking lot. Sure enough, we make a quick loop around a nearby field where we heard then spotted it and then right when we got back to the parking lot, there was another one waving and singing its sweet notes for our listening pleasure – note, it did occur to me it was really just mocking us for walking right past it into the field. The recent bird haul put me at 302 with my 3 provisionals for the year! Then the cherry on top, came home from that successful Warbler check and popped off my first 10 mile nonstop run. Life is good.

Per my last post, this month’s theme is “May I have another [chance]” where I am featuring field encounters that didn’t … for a kind perspective…go as well as expected. Primarily this involves some degree of craptastic execution behind the glass. Not always my fault (okay, mostly my fault, well, all my fault) the shots came out soft, blown out, dark abyss or eclipsed. Normally these would be promptly slammed into the circular file with a fitting commentary, but some of these are lifers and no telling when I’ll get another chance at it…but when I do, I PROMISE to get better tins. With that said, here is today’s less than stellar featured feathered friend.

This particular species is especially painful as I did get a second chance and pretty much blew that as well. Hit the jump and I’ll show you what I was able to clean up enough to tell it is at least a bird.

I am starting with shots from my second encounter with the rather plain (dare say dull) looking Warbler – in my defense I did get slightly better, but the struggle was real with this very unaccommodating member of the New World Warblers or Parulidae.

The Warbler family is full of oddly named species. There are some very descriptive monikers like the Black and White Warbler which is oddly purple and yellow…kidding. Add in the Red-Faced, Rufous Capped, Yellow-Throated, Chestnut-Sided, Yellow, Cerulean, Blue-Winged and Golden-Winged with descriptive color associated names. Then there are the states aligned ones like the Louisiana (Waterthrush), Tennessee, Nashville, Virginia, Kentucky, Connecticut, Cape May, Canada (let’s hear it hehehe). Then there is the what the hell category that includes such Warblers as Ovenbird, Prothonotary (I know, robes), Mourning, Palm, Grace’s, Hermit and the one you are looking at here, the Lucy’s Warbler.

We are overly blessed with so many gorgeous Warblers, at least while they are passing through to their breeding spots or back to their wintering grounds. Over the years I have become very familiar with a majority of these birds and have officially seen all but 10 of the 51 members of the family (failed attempting to get 3 of the missing ones last year). Oh, this is where I should probably mention I had not even heard of this particular Warbler when we first heard it calling from the dense tree canopy.

The first encounter was at Kartchner Caverns State Park outside of Benson, Arizona on our spring trek through that state last year. I mentioned this particular site in a previous post on the Cactus Wren and it remains one of my favorite places to bird in Arizona (link here). Problem is, for a desert setting, there are a lot of trees in this particular area which makes it incredibly hard to get eyes on, much less focus locked on such a nondescript bird. Merlin alerted us to its presence, but once the “what the hell is that” discussion had played out with Linda it was pretty much hear the call, reorient the ears and wait for the next call hoping to see some kind of movement and then contort to get at least a glimpse – Twister has NOTHING on what was going on there – clearly a bronze medal level Breaking performance (Raygun was clearly a birder and will live on in infamy – link here).

Eventually I did manage to get a couple of shots in the tin…scratch that…I managed to get a LOT of shots in the tin, but only a few of those actually had the target bird in them. There was enough to show off a few interesting features of this tiny Warbler.

First, the males have a faint broken rufous cap that is often not visible when they are perched. Every so often it would drop its head down just enough to give me a glimpse – shades of the hidden crown on the Kinglets. The other interesting feature is they have s similar colored spot on their tushie, very reminiscent of the rufous patches on the Towhees.

This is even harder to spot and was lucky enough to get a couple of sights as it was moving through the trees. The one below is the best look at it – quite the surprise compared to the rest of the dull gray wash that covers the wings and breast. The females, well they might as well switch teams and become a Gnatcatcher. Basically all grey with a hint of crown and rump coloring that ranges from “yellowish brown or reddish yellow” per Cornell. You darlings got the shaft in the color conga line for the Warblers.

My second sighting was at CT RV Resort in Benson. While exploring the wash that surrounds that particular resort, the name popped again on Merlin. “Oh great, here we go again“. Luckily the trees were less dense here so I did get some better looks (all the shots with the sky blue background). That did not mean I was able to technically execute better – maybe I should just take up finger painting.

As this was a lifer for me, how about we dig into some interesting facts for you to take away with you. You have to be asking yourself about now how this particular Warbler got such an obscure name. Luckily, Cornell was on it. It was named after Lucy Hunter Baird, the daughter of ornithologist Spencer Fullerton Baird who is known for being a Smithsonian Institute secretary. It had to be a letdown for her seeing all the other prettier Warbler options ha. Lucy’s are actually one of the two Warblers that nests in tree cavities – the Prothonotary being the other. It was initially discovered by James Graham Cooper in 1861 at the point where Arizona, Nevada and California come together.

This Warbler prefers DENSE southwest mesquite settings (that’s a big DUH to that one ha) with elevations in the 3k to 6k feet. They winter in Central America, but push up into lower Nevada, southern Utah, California, New Mexico and Arizona for the frisky season. This I find quite interesting as I am southern Nevada all the time and I have never seen them there. Lastly, they have a clutch size of 3 to 7 eggs and hatch “naked and helpless” – “Nathan needs some Huggies”.

All I have to say is Lucy, you are a cute little chicken (link here).

Not the most exciting Warbler and certainly not the best pictures I’ve brought you, but hopefully you enjoyed seeing this new species to the blog. Take care everyone!