Cerulean Warbler 5/13/2018

       The snow pile at the end of my street has been gone less than two weeks.  But the inconvenience of a prolonged winter is paying its dividends now (for me anyway).  Although leaf-out of the trees is a couple of weeks behind schedule the birds continued to march unabated toward their breeding grounds.

      Last spring, through a check on ebird, I discovered that there is a reliable Cerulean Warbler territory about 30 minutes from my house.  Last May, I took a couple of trips out there, heard two singing males but they remained hidden among the leaves in the Manistee National Forest canopy.  This year's delayed spring presented a more promising opportunity to view and photograph these elusive little guys.

   I was able to find three singing males but only the one in these photograph came lower than 50 feet off the ground.

    Through millions of years of evolution the battle between predator and prey has yielded a number of strategies.

   If your go-to move is to look like a twig.....your mom better have laid hundreds of eggs so that at least a couple of your siblings can carry on your dumb genes.

Game....Warbler