ML456656991
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult, Unknown sex - 1
- Sounds
- Song
- Playback
- Playback not used
Observation details
Lifer! I heard one first and eventually caught a few fleeting glimpses before it flew over to a tree very close to me where I was able to get a few unobstructed views. Like a few different vireos, this one was overall pretty drab in color. It's facial pattern was somewhere between what's typical for Warbling and Plumbeous Vireos, with a bit of a somewhat muted supercilium and a hint at spectacles. It did seem notably smaller than most vireos I've seen besides Hutton's, and with a shorter beak. It also sported a pair of faint wingbars. The song is almost like someone took a House Finch song, compressed it to be faster and less musical, and distorted it to be windier (like as in having more of a clock-winding quality, not like breezier) and slightly buzzier. So a House Finch after a double espresso. This was supposed to be one of the easiest birds to find on my trip, so perhaps the most surprising thing about this encounter was that it came last of all out of the eight lifers I found today. Remarkably, this was only the second of those eight that my practice and preparation of learning the birds' vocalizations actually mattered since the other six were either just seen or seen well before I heard them. It was a lot of fun walking through the trails on the way to coming across this jittery little guy. I probably should have felt tired (I had walked well over eight miles already today), but having just seen three lifers, I was juiced. And everything is so beautiful! It doesn't seem fair that there could be so much green, so many flowers in bloom, such nice weather, and so few bugs! I love the Bay Area for a lot of those reasons, but San Diego, and particularly this hotspot, certainly seem to take all those benefits to another level. Either that or I was just in the right place at the right time. Sometimes that's all there is to a great birding moment like this. Eight lifers is the most I've seen in a single day since before the pandemic.
Additional species
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 359.18 KB