warblers

March 29, 2026

Sara Kate Wilkinson

Sara Kate Wilkinson

— 3 min read
Share
March 29, 2026
Bird of the Day: yellow-rumpled (myrtle) warbler, butterbutt.

Where: Hidden Oaks Nature Center

When: 12:40pm

Bird Species: tufted titmouse, American robin, American crow, eastern phoebe, white-breasted nuthatch, golden-crowned kinglet, downy woodpecker, northern flicker, yellow-rumped warbler, downy woodpecker, Carolina chickadee, northern cardinal

Things I Thought About:

  • Walking around slowly with your hands clasped behind your back, holding binoculars, is the best way to walk around. I feel both official and officious. The world has laid a perfect spring Sunday afternoon of brown and green and blue out before me, and I am here to inspect it. 
  • These birds are all behaving perfectly. Not that they are especially cooperative, but they are all behaving exactly the way I have come to expect them to behave. I'm sure it's wrong to speak of bird's character, but they are behaving entirely in character.
  • I don’t think I’ve shared with the blog that most of the time I call chickadees “chickadeedles,” because one time I heard a small child at this very nature center call them that.
  • This chickadeedle is behaving perfectly. 
Behaving perfectly for a chickadeedle: making his loud buzzy call so I can't miss him, posting up high but not too high, hanging out somewhere picturesque, staying in one place long enough that I can focus up, being cute
  • I am not much like any bird, but for language I suppose I am a bit of a magpie. I never said “a grip” to denote a stretch of time until I moved to the mountains in my late twenties, where I picked it up. There are idioms and proverbs I use regularly that my sister does not, so I didn’t grow up with them. I just picked them up somewhere and tucked them away in my vocabulary, like shiny little treasures.
  • This nuthatch is behaving perfectly.
Behaving perfectly for a nuthatch: being exactly where I expect to find him, making his chuckling little call regularly (but not constantly like he sometimes does and which annoys), running down a tree trunk head down, and making that little L-shaped angle with his body as he looks to the next tree
  • The myrtle warblers are back after a winter absence of what can't have been two full months. And there's a golden-crowned kinglet, a species I've seen several times and not once gotten a decent photo of one. Warbler behavior is high up in the trees, quick, landing on a branch and immediately fluttering to the next, constant movement, darting in and out. The rare, good photo feels like a National Geographic cover to a person of my limited skill. These two are almost year-round birds here, but they do make me think of spring.
  • All warblers are all some variety of green and gray and yellow and identifying any of them, for me, requires downloading the photos and researching. People are about to learn that I am hopeless with warblers.
  • This phoebe is behaving perfectly.
Behaving perfectly for an Eastern phoebe: making that purring call that for all the world really does sound like "Feee-beee," being solitary, placid, and still, velvety brown and perfectly calm, just being a pretty little bird
  • I believe I saw my very first phoebe here. What a nice day.
  • My niece slept over last night and wanted to earn some chore money, so we started on spring cleaning my closet, and I have just now remembered that every item of clothing I own is laid out on my bed.
  • Good thing this 30-minute trip to try to find a cooperative titmouse has now lasted 115 minutes.

BOTD: yellow-rumped warbler, Eastern (myrtle) variety. Almost every photo I took today was better than the ones I took of this bird, but it's exciting to start thinking about warbler weather. A small bird with yellow is always nice to see.

Read more