New-to-me warbler

Yesterday morning, I heard what I was sure was a yellow warbler out back in the brush. It turned out not to be a yellow warbler at all — a fact I discovered as I waded through shoulder-high phlox and bushes in my running clothes and bedroom slippers, scanning the trees.

It was this handsome little fellow.

He was impossibly small and impossibly loud — singing his head off.

I heard the garage door go up — the signal that my husband was leaving for work — and crashed back out of the brush to find him standing in the driveway, waiting for me. “Did you see it?” he asked.

“It’s not a yellow warbler!” I said excitedly.

“That right there?” he asked, nodding toward the earsplitting birdsong. I thrust out my camera and showed him.

“Sure enough! What kind is it? Girls, new bird!” he called up to the open dining room window where both girls huddled, waiting to wave goodbye. “Mommy ‘shot’ him!” He understands the fascination with tracking down mystery birds. Last week he spent part of his lunch hour searching bushes near the parking lot where he works until he found that the source of the sonar-like song he was hearing was a prairie warbler.

Back inside, I looked the bird up and learned that he’s a chestnut-sided warbler. (My 11-year-old knew the minute she looked at my picture what kind of warbler it was. That’s what comes of poring over field guides for pleasure!)

I wish my photos were less grainy, but even grainy he’s a remarkable sight — another reminder that the more you look, the more you see.