Yellow warbler

The River

Those of us who live in Edmonton are extremely fortunate, in that there are many parks with hiking and biking trails throughout the city.  For bird watchers this is very, very good, as it gives many choices as to places to go in order to view and photograph birds.  This weekend I decided on a trip to the river valley.  I needed someplace new to explore and had never gone hiking there.  I chose the trails on the south side of the river, next to the Muttart Conservatory, although there are trails on the downtown side as well. 

The Trail

Male in song

I didn't see an abundance of birds, however, I did see many yellow warblers.  I was delighted of course, as this gave me greater opportunity to photograph this bright and beautiful little bird.  The first hint that I was about to encounter a new bird species was the bird song all around me.  There were two distinct and unfamiliar songs.  One of these belonged to the Yellow warbler. 

Yellow warbler

Yellow warbler sings

This little bird, it turns out, is very shy.  So it took repeated effort and patience to get some photos.  The Yellow warbler does not like to come out into the open and blends in quite well with the leaves of trees, despite it's bright yellow plumage.  This is also a tiny bird, a couple of large leaves will effectively hide it, which only adds to the difficulty in spotting it.


At first I was pretty much forced to track the bird by it's song, and once I spotted it I used the camera lens to keep it in view.  Lucky for me the Yellow warbler is a flycatcher and because of that my photographic opportunities became more numerous.  It helped a great deal that the males of the species apparently do venture out into the open, or semi-open, to belt out their seductive song to the females of their species.


In the end that is precisely how I got the photos I am sharing here.  Although I did get some photos of a female Yellow warbler, she is partly or mainly hidden.  The photos displayed here are all of a male.

Male Yellow Warbler

This last photo, just above is my favorite.

Enjoy,
Guni

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