Magnolia Magic

The last few days were yet again amazing and I have now decided (or rather was obliged) to change my blogging strategy and go from day-to-day accounts to galleries or something more in that direction.
Why, you may care to ask?
Well, if you spend a day at Crane Creek and worry your camera's memory card that allows you to save 500 pics won't be enough and then you get home and find that most of these pictures would really be nice to keep, you've not only had a great day, you have a problem as well regarding the length of your posts and the time necessary to write them.
Last Thursday was such a day at Crane Creek. One may say we (a party of four) were somewhat unlucky. Tuesday and Wednesday apparently experienced one of the best migrant fall-outs in the last 30 years at Crane Creek. I was there alone on Monday and then returned on Thursday and it was much more quiet on both these days.
Thursday however still provided us with great warbler birding and a total of 24 wood warbler species recorded by us (plus 3 or 4 more we missed). The highlights when it comes to rarity were surely a female Cerulean Warbler and a Yellow-breasted Chat. The highlight apart from rarity however clearly was the massive number of Magnolia Warblers seen that day.


According to the Sibley guide, there are 54 species of wood warblers in North America. Of these, a rough estimate of 54 are extremely neat birds and amongst this chosen elite of North American wood warblers, the Magnolia Warbler must be amongst the top - say - 54 species.
So you see it is a very special bird, and I will try to demonstrate this by showing you a few of my pictures of male Magnolia Warblers from last Thursday's trip to Crane Creek. I will keep the females for another post, in case you've been wondering...

Some of the Magnolias are a bit camera shy ...

... but they are usually of a more inquisitive nature ...

... and seem to be quite curious about us humans ...

... or are they just checking out if the camera equipment pointed at them is up to their high standard? This one apparently wasn't entirely convinced by my optics ...


...while this one thought he'd give me a chance.


And this one was quite convincing in proving that a wet Magnolia in the mist is still better than no Magnolia in the mist. And guess what, I think it is right!