a warbler missed

Barbara Blaisdell found a Lawrence's Warbler yesterday at the head of the big pasture in back of SOFO (off the Bridgehampton/Sag Harbor Turnpike). As many of the readers of this blog know, Lawrence's Warbler in one of the hybrid forms of the cross between Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers (the other hybrid type is called Brewster's Warbler). Lawrence's Warbler is the rarer of the two (it is actually a backcross between Brewster's and one of the parent species -- or possibly the result of two Brewster's mating). At any rate, I didn't get over to SOFO yesterday (when the bird was seen by Jim Ash and a small troupe of local birders) but only this morning. Working the entire edge of the field from the LIRR tracks on the south all the way round to the greenbelt woods on the eastern and northern sides of the field, I heard and saw at least six different singing Blue-winged Warblers; one of them even had a slightly aberrant song with a low chip following the usual in-out wheezing 'song'. All these birds, including the three-note singer, looked like regular Blue-wings. Oh, well. It's not a zoo and birding wouldn't be any fun if you were always sure of getting the bird!

On the way back from Bridgehampton, we took the Dune Road route to get back home. Not very active, bird-wise, but there were Snowy Egrets with the Great Egrets (first Snowies of the season seen by me), some active Willets, a fishing Common Tern and another tern attacking a Snowy which looked to me like a Forster's (another southern species getting more common in these parts). Also Boat-tailed Grackles and sitting Osprey. The terns and the grackle were also season firsts for me.

Back at the ranch, there were two or three Yellow Warblers and a Greater Yellowlegs in the open water in the middle of the marsh. Also a regular male Belted Kingfisher patrolling the creek and even chasing away intruders. The lack of a female stirs hope that she is sitting somewhere in a sand bank on her eggs!

Eric Salzman