November 8, 2026

Bird of the Day: yellow-rumped warbler, Chincoteague NWR

Where: Delmarva refuges, travel day

When: what is time, anyway

Bird Species: (cumulative on the day) semi-palmated plover, red-winged blackbird, American avocet, sanderling or dunlin, northern harrier, Cooper's hawk, great blue heron, ruddy duck (lifer), red-bellied woodpecker, tundra swam, dark-eyed-junco, yell0w-rumped warbler, kildeer, solitary sandpiper, Canada goose, mallard, great egret, ring-billed gull, northern cardinal

Things I Thought About:

So some mistakes have been made this day.
Admire that passive voice: I have made some mistakes today. Apparently, I have fucked up royally in my maps app, and somehow accidentally Added a Stop in the middle of my planned route rather than just looking up a distance between potential locations. Readers of this blog will or will not be shocked at how long it took me to discover this.
My phone could definitely collude with the enemy to run me off of cliffs. I was literally in a tunnel before I said “okay, I’ve never seen this road before in my life." I just assumed it was routing me away from Annapolis for the Ravens game.
Oh, well, I Added the Stop, may as well do a turn through the Hook today. It is 11:15 am.
Nothing much happening today, excepting massive, massive movements of shorebirds in great, scrolling clouds. Hypnotic. Worth getting out of the car to zone out on it a bit.

*What kind of birds are these, one may very well ask? If only there was any way to find out.*

The photos could never do justice to how cool this way s to watch. They weren't even moving very far, less than a football field, just great, undulating waves. No way for me to tell for sure at this distance, but I say dunlin or sanderling.

Arriving at my initial destination at 3:15, about two and half hours later than I had hoped. Thus does it take seven hours to get to an island 189 miles away.
One small pro to arriving to the refuge this late is that after 3pm, you can drive on the inner wildlife loop. I do love to walk it, and will do so tomorrow, but the low winter sun means the day is just about done for photos. If I'm going to see any small birds, it's good to be able to drive, park and walk right now.

Exactly three tundra swans in the inner pool, which I will go one and declare to be parents and a juvenile. They are nasty, ill-tempered birds, a million times more so than Canada goose, but fun to see for their relative scarcity in my perambulations.

There is a healthy collection of ten or so egrets hanging out right next to the main road. I take terrible shots of all of them. Some of it is the lighting, but I definitely need a new lens; I just can’t figure out how to get this one back up to snuff. It has dust in places that I can't figure out how to get to.

*We do like this sassy little shot, though, don't we?*

Some of the famous Chincoteague wild ponies making an appearance just at sunset. I'm looking forward to spending the whole day tomorrow.

*I had never heard of* Misty of Chincoteague until the first time I came here, but I understand it is quite a famous book. I didn't ever really have a horse girl phase growing up, though.

I love not going to work and turning off Allow Notifications in four different apps. I love not being on Bluesky all day. I love reading and eating seafood and being in a resort town in the off season.

BOTD: yellow-rumped warbler. I know, it feels like a harrowing amount of time in the car to make the Bird of the Day a bird I can see at home, but it's the scale. I love a big empty swath of wilderness, tens of thousands of acres, with no buildings and no fences. It makes finding a small bird feel more luxurious, two or three butterbutts chasing each other across the road, what a boutique experience. In all the green and blue and quiet it makes their colors and behaviors more striking and unique.

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