What is THAT?

The American Birding Association lists more than 900 bird species as living or visiting the US and Canada. And I confess, I don’t know them all. When I saw this guy last spring, I had to ask, “What is THAT?”

The answer is a black-throated blue warbler. It’s one of the roughly 40 warbler species that live in the US and Canada. The Black-throated blue spends the spring and summer in Eastern hardwood forests from Georgia north to Canada, then quite sensibly winters in the Caribbean.

I saw this bird in the Magree Marsh, about 50 miles east of Toledo. It’s a major stopover for songbirds migrating north during the spring. Thousands of birders come there in May to see and photograph birds that are otherwise very difficult or impossible to find. If I go back, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see this bird’s cousins, the black-throated green and black-throated gray warblers.

If you think the more than 900 different bird species of the US and Canada is impressive, consider this: Costa Rica, which is roughly the same size as West Virginia, had 850 different bird species!