A friend is a lucky thing to have

My friend Janet and I are beginning to think that we’re something like good-luck charms for each other when it comes to getting life birds.

The last time we saw each other in May for the World Series of Birding it was a Cape May Warbler. The time before that, also on World Series Day, it was a Eurasian Collared Dove and a Wilson’s Plover.

Today it was this little beauty: an Orange-Crowned Warbler. Pretty, huh?

This bird belongs out west and is pretty common there from what I’ve read. There’s one at Sandy Hook most winters, but I’ve not ever bothered to chase it, thinking that it must be dull and drab and skulky and not worth the effort.
It was a bit skulky, of course, but its color stood out nicely against the winter browns of the faded goldenrod and leafless, but still lethal, poison ivy.

Neither of us could take very much credit for finding the bird; it’d been reported for a while and someone stopped into the bird observatory this morning during my stint there and told me exactly where to look for it. Janet and I set out together around 2:30, chatting merrily away, and happened upon another birder with his scope trained on it. Very convenient!

All of this leaves me wondering if I shouldn’t find more excuses to bird with a good-luck charm, or Janet.

😉

11 thoughts on “A friend is a lucky thing to have”

  1. Consider yourself lucky, indeed. Most people around here would try to shoot and eat it. :-/

    Cool little warbler, I’ll have to look up its song. The last oddity we had here was an American Red Start. Interesting bird whose behaviour reminds me of a tropical bird I forgot the name of… Sorry.

    I still love the lowly old Carolina Wrens – their songs are ubiquitous in the spring and summer.

  2. Congrats on the find. For whatever reason, I too have better luck spotting birds when I have someone to go with me. Neat little bird…

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