lifers

May 9, 2026

Sara Kate Wilkinson

Sara Kate Wilkinson

— 7 min read
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May 9, 2026
Bird of the Day: my sixth life bird of 2026, the summer tanager. I like that thick curved bill.

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 11:45am - 4:10pm

Bird Species: European starling, summer tanager (lifer), blue-gray gnatcatcher, mallard, common yellowthroat, indigo bunting, Canada goose, wood duck, red-winged blackbird, great blue heron, hooded merganser, osprey, tree swallow, great horned owl, Acadian flycatcher, white-eyed vireo, northern cardinal, barn swallow, orchard oriole, eastern kingbird, ruby-throated hummingbird, eastern phoebe, pileated woodpecker, gray catbird, prothonotary warbler, hermit thrush, eastern bluebird

Things I Thought About:

  • Oh, you better believe I woke up thinking about the prothonotary warbler I didn't get to blog about. I went to the farmer's market and bought strawberries for a galette and marigolds for my balcony, and now I'm going to go see if I can catch up to some of the shots I missed yesterday.
  • I was up too late last night, finishing a novel, which is okay, but then idly scrolling Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia blooper videos on YouTube. It's a show I never watched. Regrettably, I need my protagonists not to be horrible people. It's a fatal flaw. But I could watch those videos all day. And night, as it turns out.
  • It's Always Sunny is a show best experienced in its blooper reels, and Schitt's Creek and The West Wing are best experienced in YouTube fan edits. Heretically, Moira Rose never did anything for me but grate (see above: horrible people) but it was really easy to root for the kids, and I will watch a 19 minute "Alex and Ted's Love Story" video any night of the week.
  • Before I even get out of the parking lot I have a life bird. Anything else that happens today will be gravy.
  • Good lord, man. You'll never get that down. Remember, a serving size is two frogs, that's at least five.
He did in fact get it down, but it was a three-minute ordeal and his throat was bulging out all over the place like Nancy Reagan, allegedly.
  • A couple of blue-gray gnatcatchers are flitting around the start of the boardwalk, and absolute chaos ensues when a dude, obviously accompanied by multiple generations of his family, calls them "big gnatties." Giggles from about half the overhearers, while a very senior woman of his party starts earnestly correcting him, no, they're little gnatties, why'd you say big, they're teeny-tiny gnatties, he's backpedaling, what's funny, her presumed grandchildren are choking, etc.
  • The gnatcatcher is FURIOUS.
A big gnatcheral. Look at this cracked out bird. I'd kill for him.
  • I love coming out here when I have no other plans for the day. I could have wrapped this up with the lifer, and the gnatcatcher, and I have a couple of beautiful shots of a white-eyed vireo, I think, but I have nowhere to be, so I'm just going to sit down on the boardwalk and wait to see if this osprey catches anything.
  • Oh, oh, just as I settle in for a long sit, my duck pals from yesterday start a long traverse of the ponds. That was great timing. They were hoodies and there are still nine of them.
If you are not going "oh!" with your little mouth open, I don't get you.
  • Something in my body refuses to click the shutter when an osprey dives. I think I'm just too awestruck; I'm always clicking away as soon as he comes up, to see if he got anything, but I never actually catch the splashdown, even when I'm looking right at it. Two dives, two misses. Incredible bird.
(all of you in unison at this point) The WINGSPAN on this bird.
  • A barn swallow has landed. I repeat, a swallow is holding still for a fucking second. And I do have my camera.
A casual swallow. Just like Nancy Reagan, ALLEGEDLY.
  • The thing about a barn swallow, any swallow, is, while I'm grateful beyond belief for the photos I just took, you really must see them in action, and you must see a handful of them together. The stark and total switch between blue or green or brown up top to the light colors below, which just flips back and forth as they make their big, looping, concentric circles, one zagging the other way occasionally, going low to skim the water and looping around again, light side out or in, criss-crossing. I can never get a photo of one in flight, and I wouldn't do it justice if I could.
  • Oh, that's exactly what you don't want to see around the great horned owl's area: a troop of uniformed Cub Scouts. I'm sure they're up there, but I pass quickly, in pursuit of the Acadian flycatcher I just heard.
  • This was a fun little chase. The crowds are back around the owl, so I have the trail to myself, and can whip my head and binos around, take three steps and stop stock-still, tilt my head and listen, follow the clues. An Acadian flycatcher has a sharp, short call, and he makes it at intervals that are spaced pretty widely, so there is a lot of room to play. That's what it feels like, a game of pretend, where I pretend I'm on Wild Kingdom and that the Acadian flycatcher is a leopard, maybe. A nice time.
Not exactly in stealth mode, after all that. More of an "ooh, a piece of candy!" style trail of sound for me to follow. Glad he's out there eating bugs, though. He could do it a little harder, even! I haven't ever shown this bird on the blog before; I like his double wing bars.
  • Do people remember Wild Kingdom? Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom? I am constantly dating myself to outside even my own demographic. I only watched the stuff my parents watched and really only listened to their music until I was in high school. I loved Wild Kingdom, and Marlin Perkins, too. I think I was in college before I thought, wait, was that a bank, or an insurance company, or what?
  • I lose birds all the time when I'm trying to take a photo, and the difference in my reaction between "I tip my hat to you, good sir, you have eluded me" and "oh you little bastard" is largely a matter of history. I see the prothonotary warbler streak by and sink himself into a deep shrub, lead me on a chase, and refuse to show himself again, and oh, well, he has outmaneuvered me. If I don't find the pileated woodpecker that is making all the noise on the Cedar Trail today I'm going to curse generations of his family.
  • As is the custom in such moments, allow me to once again do my phenomenal impression of Joey Pants in Midnight Run.
"I got you, you BISH."
  • Oh my god I did it. I can't believe it. I got every photo I mentioned not getting in last night's post.
The prothonotary warbler, who today, in its usual behavior, was only there for a second or two. This is a very rare bird, and an interesting historical footnote to HUAC and the Cold War. The TL;DR is that knowing Hiss had seen a prothonotary warbler was meant to establish a very close connection between Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, but let me tell you, when I saw my first prothonotary, I told the counter guys at Jersey Mike's about it.
  • Not as good a setup as last night for the prothonotary, but better for the ducks and the gnatcatcher. This is another reason to get to know your local park or refuge; everything was right where I left it.

BOTD: Summer tanager. I don't have much to say about this bird for the simple reason that I never saw one before! One thing I will state, his song was very loud and very beautiful. I knew this was going to be a life bird from the second I heard it. I didn't know what it was, but I knew what it wasn't, which was any of the birds I know. This was immensely helpful when I saw it, because at the height and angle he was at the first sighting, one might think he was a cardinal.

The only thing I really know about the summer tanager is that the males are the only totally red bird in North America. Cardinals have black masks, and scarlet tanagers have black arm bars, but this guy is just red. And he was singing a lot. He wanted us to see him. An Unlikely bird in Alexandria today.

Pals, this was a phenomenal day. I thought there was little chance of picking up all of yesterday's misses, but I was knocking them down like tenpins. Usually I take maybe 85 photos, and consider 6-11 good enough to download. Today I took over 300, and I'm keeping 56. I didn't have room to show you all the good shots today. Everywhere I looked, I was looking in the right place and the right time, and God. I feel like I was due, and overdue, for a day like it.

I didn't even mention that the kingbirds are back! I didn't even show you a phoebe or the vireo! Any one of these birds today could have been bird of the day, but the summer tanager is my lifer, so the summer tanager is the bird of the day. Also in Notes, he was "SummerTan," something I've never had in my life. Maybe this year.

SKWBOTD EXTRA: Today was the Global Big Day, and I forgot to tell you about it because I have been so dysregulated this week it completely slipped my mind. But what a day for it. I love my list, and if you were out today, I hope you'll send yours in too.

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