My First Worm-eating Warbler

At the beginning of a year, it's always fun to think of what the first major highlight of the year might be.  For 2020, I wondered what it would be several times.  I've come to a point where I don't guess, but I do wonder a lot.  The discovery of a bird is great thing, and it's interesting to wonder on how long a bird can be at a spot before it is detected.  To start off 2020 and a new decade, a great bird showed up.  When a small Maricopa County town called Sunflower was birded, luckily this bird decided to lift it's head up and get active at the right time when there was the chance for it to be discovered.

Marceline Vandewater was birding Sunflower on the morning of January 7th.  She had a great find when she found a rare-in-Arizona Worm-eating Warbler.  

Good thing the Worm-eating Warbler had it's head up and was active when Marceline made the pass through Sunflower.  Otherwise, no one else would've likely went birding at the spot in a replicated scenario to what Marceline had.

I was at work and Marceline sent a photograph into the Arizona Birding community via Facebook.  The news was great, and I headed straight for Sunflower after work.  I've gotten into the habit of taking my binoculars and camera with me everyday to work, and that habit has payed off.  When I got to Sunflower, I wasn't expecting an immediate success when it would come to relocating the Worm-eating Warbler.  Within five minutes of looking, the bird made it's appearance in midst of a feeding flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers.

Celebration time came early, and the Worm-eating Warbler became my first major highlight of 2020.  It was a lifebird for me, and it also became my 51st wood warbler that I have for the United States.  I enjoyed the bird with great views for about 30 minutes on January 7th, and then I returned on the 8th in the morning and early afternoon to look at it and photograph it more.  Plenty of other birders enjoyed it too.

Birders have said that the Worm-eating Warbler is poorly named, and that plenty of other warblers eat worms too.  It's caramel coloration might be more of an appropriate aspect to name the bird after, but in my opinion, I like the name Worm-eating Warbler.  The name is fun to me.

I just read that the bird's main diet of moth caterpillars and worms is indeed where it has gotten it's name from.  This Sunflower bird was observed foraging at high and low levels in trees, in thick understory, and at times on the ground  digging in leaf litter.  The Worm-eating Warbler is big for a warbler, and it feeds by probing and gleaning for insects under leaves and branches in nuthatch-like ways and Black-and-white Warbler-like ways.  I enjoyed this life bird a lot to the point that I went to see it three times over January 7th and 8th.  While the Worm-eating Warbler is an Arizona rarity, it's typical range is in the eastern United States, especially in the southeast and as far north as Wisconsin and Maine.  Thanks to Marceline for a great find.  With this warbler addition, the two remaining regularly occurring Wood Warblers I need for the United States and Cape May and Connecticut Warblers, and the casual ones I need are Crescent-chested Warbler and Golden-crowned Warbler.  For now, here is a series of photographs that I took of the Worm-eating Warbler.