Cassin’s Vireo (Vireo cassinii)Photo by Flickr user Amado…
Friday, April 20th, 2018
Cassin’s Vireo (Vireo cassinii)
Photo by Flickr user Amado Demesa
#245
There are some decent-sized holes in my birding knowledge. As I was discussing in connection with terns yesterday, there are certain groups I’ve tended to avoid in the past as requiring too much work.
“Little olive jobs flitting in tree canopies” is one of them. Until recently I haven’t really put in the effort. As a result, until this morning I’d never (knowingly) seen a Cassin’s Vireo.
But with the year-list obsession I have no excuse. People started reporting them around here few weeks ago in eBird, and I started keeping my eyes open. And this morning I was successful! I was looking at migrants in the willows at the Greenwell Preserve; the sun had just come up and the trees were full of singing. At one point I thought I heard what sounded like the Cassin’s Vireo recordings I’d been listening to, but it didn’t repeat, and I gave up looking for the singer and went back to all the awesome Orange-crowned and Nashville Warblers. And then there it was, plain as day! Spectacles, gray head, wing bars… I even got a glimpse of the yellow edging on the secondaries.
A very stylish bird. 🙂
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/173130874996.
