When Two Rights Produce A Really Right

Widow Skimmer (I think)

The great thing about being a birder in an active birding community like Cleveland is that in May you can count on at least two things: When you are most busy, deeply involved in some gotta-get-done project, a rare bird will show up; and second, that your phone will start ringing shortly thereafter.
Such was our morning. I heard Susan’s mobile start chirping and covered my ears. The call was from birding buddy extraordinaire, Bill Osborne. He was looking at a Lawrence’s Warbler in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park! When a rarity shows up in your backyard you really have no choice.
Lawrence’s Warbler is so rare that its name does not even appear on the American Birding Association’s list. Well, that’s not exactly true. The bird is really a hybrid phenotype offspring of a Blue-winged Warbler and a Golden-winged Warbler. Even if you’re not a birder you can close your eyes and imagine what the offspring of two birds with those descriptive names might look like. And you’d be right.
This stunning bird carries characteristics of both its parents and most often the song of the Blue-winged Warbler. The Lawrence’s is the less-frequently seen hybrid of the pair; the Brewster’s is more common, and in my estimation, less colorful.
Does it count as a lifer? Yes and no. In our heart of hearts it does; for the records it does not. I’ll leave the genetics and cross-generation stuff to the experts. For me the bird is going to carry the number 602 on the North American life list, and damn the torpedoes.
Bill’s directions to the spot near Goose Feather Pond were right on the money. If retirement does not work out for him I suggest he get a job as the voice in one of those GPS gadgets we display on the dash of our cars.
We were on the spot in a matter of minutes—love it when these things show up close to home—and listening to the bird’s song. It took a bit of hunting in the deep foliage, but Susan and I both had good looks at the bird; its black mask and throat patch, bright yellow forehead and crown, and breast and belly also bright yellow. From the nape down its back the bird is some color shade between olive and greyish blue. The bold white wing bars on this bird looked a bit yellowish to me. Unfortunately, photography was out of the question. The foliage was dense, the bird fast and the camera guy slow. We gave the bird a solid 45 minutes to have its portrait made, but it had other things on its mind.
Since I was psychologically loaded to shoot anything with wings, I had to settle for a few dragonflies. I’ll have to leave the identification to my Odonata-watcher friends.

You tell me ...