At the stroke of midnight, as September arrived, an early autumn settled on the city. Also, the cricket (yes, there is only one) began singing.
August was absurd, in the best way, with low temperatures and air that did not feel like a suffocatingly wet, hot blanket. This is the first year where I never actually packed our duvet away. There were a few stifling nights this summer, but only a handful.
Then yesterday, I heard a new sound in the garden. A sort of chip! chip! - like a cardinal with a cough. Later, as I worked at my laptop at my desk, which is really the dining table, I saw this little bird.
I love the fall migrants. Often tiny, somehow very at home and confident in a new place, but also unbearably fragile. They travel so far (and yes, you can read a lot into that). And to find them resting in a green space you have made is like a small blessing (not a word I use, easily - it is so overused and has become trite).
The photos are bad because they are taken through double glazed windows, and a set of wrought iron burglar bars, but I watched him/her for a long time, busily chasing down tiny insects, always remaining under the cover of leaves and flitting about beneath the plants. And s/he is still here today, bustling about in the rear of the garden.
Yet to identify the bird. Tell me if you know.
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Check out Nashville warbler. I'm in Alaska and we have lots of different warblers, but not this one. To make warblers even more difficult to ID, the juveniles look different, and they all change color in the fall.
ReplyDeleteThank you! The whiteness around the eye did catch our attention.
DeleteI agree that it looks like a Nashville warbler - yellow throat and distinct eye ring. Did you notice if it flicked it's tail? That's another sign. Warblers are so difficult. To get a picture of one is almost impossible they flit about so quickly. These are great pictures.
ReplyDeletePS Not sure about tail flicking. Will pay attention.
DeleteYes! Distinct tail flicking. Thank you, again.
DeleteThen again, it could be an orange-crowned warbler.
ReplyDeleteThank you... I think Nashville may be closer?
DeleteCould be a Connecticut Warbler...
ReplyDeleteSo very sweet!
Oh boy, these warblers. I have not heard that call, but will listen extra hard.
DeleteI spotted one over the weekend in my garden. It's the same time my Echinacea Seeds start enticing those bright yellow gold finches come to feed. I think from what Sibley's Bird illustrations, the little green ones might be Connecticut Warblers. Their tails do flick as do they and they seem to like to stay on the ground. Where the Gold finches feed off the stems of the dried flowers
DeleteI had one of these guys, or something very similar, in my back yard about five blocks from your area. "Confusing Fall Warblers"!
ReplyDeleteA rose by any other name would smell as sweet, this little fella is adorable whatever his name is :)
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus), also known as the mejiro (メジロ, 目白), (Wikipedia)
ReplyDeleteYour bird looks very similar to these birds found all over here in Hawaii. Hard to tell from color photo on computer. But the habitat range is definitely not Brooklyn!
Indeed, def. not your white eye (we have a similar one in South Africa - z. virens, Cape white eye).
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