ML230117551
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
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- Playback
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Observation details
First eBird report for location (Normanskill Farm hotspot #157). Regionally rare but nearly annual in Albany County in spring since 2015. Textbook male with no evident visual or aural indication of Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora cyanoptera) ancestry: slender, strikingly colored Vermivora with bright yellow crown and wing patches, striking black-and-white facial pattern (black "mask" and throat), pale gray below, and darker gray on wings and mantle. No yellow plumage other than crown and wing patches. The bird sang quite frequently throughout the observation period, always giving the standard Golden-winged Warbler song: a high and thin buzzy introductory note, followed by three or more lower notes of similar timbre. I first encountered the bird ~0815 while trudging up the "back forty" thicket path at Normanskill Farm, uphill from the last hole of the Capital Hills at Albany golf course. The warbler first caught my attention by giving an odd, twittering sputter that reminded me of some hummingbird vocalizations. I located the warbler immediately after that, after it flew into a flowering fruit (apple?) tree, where it remained for nearly the entire initial observation time, singing, feeding, and generally being quite cooperative, allowing me to collect a great deal of photographic, video, and audio evidence. I watched it stay in the same tree from ~0815 to 0858, when it flew out into some lower nearby brush, where it continued to feed and sing. John Kent arrived ~0910 and we were able to refind the bird in the same location. I returned to the same area ~1000 after finding Mark Fitzsimmons searching for the bird, and we were able to relocate it again. Albany County #236,City of Albany #193, Normanskill Farm #154
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 8.49 MB