My Ten Favorite Warbler Photos Of 2020

This was an interesting year for birding. It started off normal, but then quickly went crazy like everything else. I actually quit going to the Celery Bog for a while because it was too crowded. The spring migration was not what it was the year before for me as I had limited time to bird. The fall migration barely happened for me. On this countdown only one photo appears from that fall migration. I still had a ton of fun and I made some photos of birds that I had never seen before. Here are my ten (plus a couple) favorite photos from this past birding year.

10. This is the lone fall photo of a warbler that made this countdown. I was actually in position to make photos of a couple of different birds across from where I was. This yellow-rumped warbler kept coming close though making sure that I could get a photo of it. It was actually too close to make a photo most of the time. Here it found a good spot and by leaning back I could grab focus on it.

9. I love it when birds come to a place where I hoped that they would. If you put yourself in a good situation then when the bird comes through you will have a nice perch for the bird. This is also an example of foreground objects that you cannot see through the viewfinder, but when they are blown up bigger they become a much bigger problem.

8. I love it when a bird does something different. Here this yellow-rumped warbler was reacting to someone making noise around me. It gave me a different look and gave me a photo that I really liked. At some point all bird on a stick photos start to look alike. You want anything different. The perch here was nice as well.

7. If you have ever photographed birds then you know that the ruby-crowned kinglet does not sit still very long. A photo like this needs a lot of luck. You have to be on the bird and in the right spot when it lands. The quick glance at me was all that it did before moving to the next branch. They are looking for food after all and not posing.

6. This is the common yellowthroat. I used to call it the uncommon yellowthroat because I rarely had a good opportunity to make photos of it. This year though I kept finding them over and over. If you read the blog in the spring you know that they were then renamed the formally uncommon common yellowthroats.

5. I love it when I make a photo unlike anything that I have made before. This palm warbler was on a cool branch and gave me a good pose. I was actually hoping that a bird would land on the curved branch in the back, but this did nicely as well.

4. We have reached the palm warbler section of this countdown. Here I liked these two photos because of the background. The first was a nice mix of colors that Lightroom helped me make and the second was just the forest floor which always makes a great background.

3. Here the two palm warbler photos make it on the countdown because of the perch. This spring the palm warblers were everywhere. You just had to find a nice perch and wait. One would eventually show up.

2. This was the year of the common yellowthroat as I said above. This was a photo that all came together nicely. It was my favorite of all of the common yellowthroat photos that I made this past year.

1. This was a photo that I have wanted to make for a while. A yellow warbler up against the blue sky. I found this very cooperative yellow while on the way back to my car. The late day sun was hitting it just right. I waited long enough for it to come nearer to me and it was higher in the tree allowing the blue sky to show up. It was an exercise in patience, but here it paid off.

 

 

This was a crazy year. When I was thinking about this countdown I didn’t think that I had anything to put on it. When I was looking through the photos I realized that I actually had a fun year. I really miss my quiet morning walks in the woods. Hopefully at some point this year things will get back to normal so we can enjoy those again.