Saturday, May 7, 2011

Mucho bloggable material

A group of New River Birding & Nature Festival attendees celebrates an outstanding encounter with a Cerulean Warbler. It was a life bird for many of them, and the warbler was just one cog in an incredibly rich West Virginia mountain ecosystem.

I just gave my 4th program in eight days, and this morning, led my 8th field foray in eight days. There's been precious little time for making posts about some of our interesting finds, of which there have been many. Hopefully, over the next week I'll be able to pipe some cool photos and stories out to the WWW.

A gorgeous male Black-throated Blue Warbler pokes from his specialized great rhododenron/eastern hemlock habitat. Often tame and confiding, BTBW's tend to forage low, thus they are not typically a cause of "warbler-neck".


Some of our participants collapsed after the all-day Cranberry Glades foray. They're fine, just tired and happy. This expedition, last Wednesday, was the most productive trip to the Glades that I have yet had. We found nearly all of the specialty breeding birds and had wonderful looks of most. Many interesting plants were noted, including the rare - in these parts - yellow coral-root, Corallorhiza trifida. It was a life plant for me.


More to follow.

2 comments:

Queensgirl said...

When I think of that Sugar Creek walk, I recall walking with Ceruleans singing all around me. A Sea of Cerulean Song. (and there I am, in the front of that photo!)
- Donna

Jim McCormac said...

Nice meeting you down there, Donna!