Kentucky Warbler

Please pardon this Brief Warbler Interruption.

Yesterday, after coming down early in the morning and hunting around for migrants in Grant Park before the temporary heat took hold, I decided to try a different route on my lunch break, which was pretty late in the afternoon. I went down the stairs to the Riverwalk, which yielded very little except for a Lincoln’s Sparrow. It was my third Lincoln’s of the day. I’ll revisit Lincoln in another post.

I passed an opening to an underpass that led to something park-like, so I decided to walk back to work that way. What I found was a little park adjacent to the Four Seasons Hotel and some other buildings I don’t know, which I will have to map and give a name, if it doesn’t have one already, so I can use it as an ebird location (mission accomplished, see the end of this post). It confirms the common knowledge that this time of year is magical: you never know what you will find where.

I didn’t have much time left on my lunch, of course, when I spotted something warbler-like darting around in the lilies.

It wasn’t until I developed my pictures late last night after swimming…that I realized I recognized something about this bird. Actually it was the yellow spectacles in the top photo that finally triggered the correct response in my brain. Kentucky Warblers are rare up here and I had seen one only once before, last year on the trip to southern Illinois, after searching to find one even down there for a long time: they are skulkers.

To top off this Brief Warbler Interruption I would like to share a picture of a Common Yellowthroat, a more likely park species, who was also trying to evade my lens in the same location.

Common Yellowthroat

As an update: I found out the name of the park. It is officially The Park at Lakeshore East. I have added it to my ebird locations.