Unexpected. There are reports of migrant warblers every now and then, here and there, but the warblers are, for all practical purposes, gone except for the few that stay to start families. But after reading every day about a Connecticut Warbler that continued to hang out, for over a week, in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn downtown, I finally got on the subway last Wednesday afternoon and went to see it for myself. It was not my first Connecticut Warbler, but its sheer persistence persuaded me.
Connecticut Warbler, Holiday Inn, Chicago parking lot
If I regret anything about my visit it was my failure to record his song, because he was a strong, adamant singer and he would knock off a few phrases every five minutes or so.
For those who are into identifying warblers by their undertail coverts…
For all I know the Connecticut could still be there, although there have been no reports since Saturday. Below is a handsome Gray Catbird that popped out at the Holiday Inn parking lot as well.
Gray Catbird
The stragglers I encountered almost every day the past two weeks were White-Throated Sparrows. Yesterday they were gone from 155 N. Wacker, but I still heard one singing, of all things, at Union Station. I tried to report it in ebird on my phone app but gave up when it kept challenging me. So much for citizen science.
A lingering White-Throated Sparrow
Perhaps my favorite late warbler in terms of chutzpah was the little Ovenbird below who made the berm by the bicycle rack at Union Station his territory. He was still singing last week. His habitat wasn’t all cigarette butts but I found it rather poignant that he could endure them.
Ovenbird at Union Station
Also last week, there was a Chestnut-Sided Warbler at 155 N. Wacker. That was a special treat, even if that space, always in the shadows, made him difficult to photograph.
Chestnut-Sided Warbler
There was a female Common Yellowthroat too: a furtive, not-always-so-common sight.
Common Yellowthroat
Below is my last first-year male American Redstart at 155 N. Wacker.
The Union Station Ovenbird was just a delight to hang out with. I miss his cheery song already.
I haven’t heard or seen him this week, so I hope he has moved on to better territory.
The forecast is for hot, rainy, muggy weather this week. I don’t know if I’m quite ready for the mosquito onslaught.
This beautiful Fox Sparrow was the bird that most intrigued me Thursday morning and then I forgot to put him in the previous post because I was so distracted by the rarer sightings that day. I don’t see Fox Sparrows enough to take them for granted, so I was initially as excited about the Fox Sparrow as the Catbird. I have added a short video of the Fox Sparrow doing his scratch dance at the bottom of this post.
The Lincoln’s Sparrow from the previous post is also in the video but for some reason the lens only wanted to focus on the Fox. It could be that the Lincoln’s didn’t appear all that distinctive to the camera as the available light kept decreasing. But it’s also user error, I’m sure.
Unexpected. There are reports of migrant warblers every now and then, here and there, but the warblers are, for all practical purposes, gone except for the few that stay to start families. But after reading every day about a Connecticut Warbler that continued to hang out, for over a week, in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn downtown, I finally got on the subway last Wednesday afternoon and went to see it for myself. It was not my first Connecticut Warbler, but its sheer persistence persuaded me.
The forecast is for hot, rainy, muggy weather this week. I don’t know if I’m quite ready for the mosquito onslaught.
