My First Warbler of 2014

yellow rumped warbler from allaboutbirds.com

Today I went on a bird walk sponsored by Anoka County.  A well known birder took a group of 15 around a wetland near the Bunker Hills Activity Center.  When we started at 7:30 a.m. it was pretty quiet out there except for chorus frogs and a couple spring peepers.  By 9 o'clock it was warmer and more birds were singing.  We saw chickadees, white breasted nuthatches and blue jays and robins at first.  One birder was looking down and found a fat toad on the side of the path.  The poor toad was so cold it didn't respond when it was nudged with the toe of a shoe.  That is what I like about being with birders.  They have as much interest in toads and other kinds of nature as birds.  We were walking on a sandy path.  We saw many holes in the sand.  Our leader asked us what could have made these holes.  To me they looked like the holes made by critters on an ocean beach.  "Beetles?  Worms?" I asked. To my chagrin he pointed out what kind of path we were on and the pattern the holes made on the path.  They were holes made by the poles of cross country skiers.  Just last week we had enough snow for cross country skiing.  Along the path we saw swamp sparrows and song sparrows foraging in the litter.  We got a good view of both golden crowned kinglets and ruby crowned kinglets.  In the trees we saw downy woodpeckers, hairy wood peckers, red bellied woodpeckers, and pileated woodpeckers. We saw a sand hill crane land in the wetland close to a Canadian goose. I got a great view of a hermit thrush.  A bald eagle and a turkey vulture flew by overhead.  On a branch an Eastern bluebird perched in the sun looking brilliant blue against the white puffy clouds.  In the wetland we watched the male red winged blackbirds defend their territory from each other.  One of them must have had territory close to the board walk because he kept dive bombing us until we walked away.  A hawk flew by very high.  One of the women in the group was in a birding class with me years ago.  As we tried to identify the hawk I whispered to her "broadband hawk."  This was her guess at a hawk at this very same park several years ago.  There is no such thing as a broadband hawk.  There is a broad winged hawk and there was broadband internet connection.  She laughed hard at that birding memory.  We saw tree swallows and barn swallows.  The final bird on the trip, the creme dela creme of the morning, was my first warbler of the year; a yellow rumped warbler.