Northern IL Summer Warblers: Cerulean, Prothonitary, and Yellow-throated.

PRETTY BIRDS and PRETTY POOR PHOTOS

I'll finish my series about Wood Warblers who live in Northern Illinois for the summer with a group of my poor quality pictures of the cerulean warbler, Prothonitary warbler, Yellow-throated warbler and Ovenbird. The reason I am showing bad pictures, is because I didn't get any better photos of this group of warblers that I don't get a chance to see very often. I also entered my "excuses" for the poor picture quality.

Cerulean Warbler, Rock Cut State Park, IL; 5/12/2012.

It took me some time to finally spot the beautiful Cerulean warbler, as I heard it singing but couldn't find it. Unfortunately it was a dark gray day and the photo quality wasn't very good.

Ovenbird, Mississippi Palisades State park, IL; 5/28/2012.

Ovenbirds are warblers I hear far more than see. Surprisingly this Ovenbird (Above) was high up on a tree branch. They are usually scrounging around in the underbrush. This guy was not only high in a tree but also probably 200-250 feet away in a dark part of the forest, and I had trouble getting a sharp focus with my hand-held 150-500mm Sigma Zoom lens.

Prothonitary Warbler, Colored Sands Forest Preserve, Shirland, IL; 6/12/2012.

This Prothonitary Warbler was also hiding pretty well high in the tree tops and (Above) was probably my best effort as it popped out for a brief second and before I could sharpen my manual focus, it flew off out of sight.

Yellow-throated Warbler, Rock Cut State park, IL; 6/15/2012.

I thought I lucked out when I saw a Yellow-throated Warbler sitting wide open on the road in front of me. I took a quick shot out of my car window (Above), before I pulled over and tried to stealthily get a better vantage point of this beautifully appointed bird. I tried my trick of shooting a photo then moving slowly closer, but this crafty little guy wouldn't cooperate. As I took one step closer, it would fly 20 feet further down the road. it stayed in the open, but was always a little too far out of my "sharp focus" range and it stayed in the tree shadows at the side of the road and finally out of sight completely. So it turned out that my best shot was the one I took out of the window of my car. My only other photo of this species was a blurry one-attempt shot earlier this spring (Below).

A blurry Yellow-throated Warbler, Rock Cut State Park, IL; 5/5/2012.

This ends my series of summer warblers from northern Illinois. To see a complete list of Warblers that call Northern Illinois their summer home, see my post from 8/19/ 2012.