On the Wing #15: With fall, cometh the warblers...
I'm now just 20 species away from the glorious 300 and got there, thanks to a renewed interest in warblers. I wasn't always like this. I remember years ago when I had a National Audubon Society Guide to the Birds of North America CD-ROM and like most things in my birding life, used it until it worked no more (or at least until technology advanced to the point where I couldn't upload it anymore). I listened to most bird calls religiously (mainly waterfowl due to an early interest in waterfowling history and decoys), but avoided some of the larger groups such as sparrows, shorebirds, and of course, warblers. Warblers terrified me with their random patches of yellow, small size, high-pitched songs, and other clues towards their baffling variety. At such a young age, I thought I could reasonably get away with never having to identify them in the field or by their songs and instead concentrate on the larger, more visible birds. It remained this way pretty much until I made it ...