This past May was exceptionally wet, with long stretches of rainy days, and even more filled with solid overcast. As a result, my birding experiences have been less than in prior years, which I attribute to somewhat less actual bird activity coupled with fewer outings. So the irony isn’t lost on me that during one of my very first birding adventures this year, I very likely captured my best photo of the year.
That first image is a chestnut-sided warbler against a patch of blue sky, and it’s one of those photos that makes me grin and think, “Hey, maybe I do actually know what I’m doing with a camera after all!”
Sometimes you just get lucky and find a cooperative subject that’s within range of your lens. That’s what happened here, as I hiked up the Blueberry trail at the Eales Preserve. I had been looking for towhees, but was open to any bird I can find. Still, I wasn’t expecting to find two warblers sharing the same patch of scrub oak!
It seems unlikely to find two males of the same species sharing the same cluster of trees, especially during breeding season. But there they were – both moving from perch to perch and singing their little hearts out. They may have been to preoccupied with each other to care about me, but regardless of the reason they were uncommonly tolerant of my presence. I spent at least 10 minutes at the outer edge of their thicket, tracking them as they moved between vantage points, and came away with several strong images – including a short series featuring a caterpillar snack.
It goes to show that the best way to make good images is to get out and look for them. There are plenty of days where I find very little; but the days where I get lucky make it all worth while!