I spent most of the morning at Lindsay-Parsons with Bob McGuire. The goal was to re-find the Worm-eating Warbler nest I found awhile back. We climbed from the bottom, starting at the right place south of Celia's cup, all the way to the Thatcher's Pinnacle overlook, wandering a lot in between, but I never re-found the trees which I had thought were distinctive, let alone the nest nearby. We heard a distant possible Worm-eating Warbler a few times, but basically that aspect of the expedition was a bust. A HERMIT THRUSH sang for us much of the time, which was nice, and Bob was very good natured.
Fortunately, we had a couple other exciting finds. The previously-reported CLAY-COLORED SPARROW was still singing in the same area four hours later when we returned between 10:45 and 11am, and we got better looks, plus Bob got documentary photos. Starting from the parking lot on 34/96 the trail goes through a bit of woods then out into a field. As you cross that first field there is a large clump of rose bushes on the SE side of the trail, and the bird sang from here as well as the hedgerow when you reach the northeast side of the field (looking at aerial photos, actually that "hedgerow" is a peninsula of trees extending west into the field). Between the rose and the hedgerow to the north, the bird was very cooperative - singing and moving and often being in view or at least find-able.
The other interesting bird we saw was along the west end of the flat stretch of trail through a very shrubby valley just before you enter the woods to cross the creek and railroad: a female-type LAWRENCE'S WARBLER. This is close to where Chris Wood found a Lawrence's last year. Today's bird did not sing. It was mostly yellow, with white corners of the tail, white wing-bars, a wider black line through the eye than typical Blue-winged Warbler, a large triangular "five o'clock shadow" of grayish yellow on the throat, and, inexplicably a small bit of black on the very front of the forehead extending slightly along the midline. When I first saw the bird it appeared wet, but even after it had shaken off and flown a couple times and looked drier it showed all these features.
--Dave Nutter
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