October 18, 2020
This morning I had to choose between going up to Marana, about 45 miles north, to chase a female-type Mountain Bluebird or go look for birds of opportunity. Several decent birds, Clay-colored Sparrow, Lawrence’s Goldfinch and Ruddy Ground-dove had been seen recently at Paton’s in Patagonia. There is a small water treatment plant which discharges treated water, a decent flow, into the creek behind Paton’s. Louie Dombroski, the resident manager of Paton’s had suggested taking a chair and just sitting near the water to see what shows up. So I did. I had 52 species including a Scarlet Tanager (Found by Louie or Thor Manson) which refused to cooperate and a female Ruddy Ground-dove who flew off before I could retrieve my camera.
I saw this warbler with my naked eyes and after a very quick look through my bins I grabbed my camera and blasted away on what I believed was a common, but getting late, Hermit Warbler. My initial view did look like a Hermit,and when one is photographing a bird the photographer spends no time on the the finer points of ID but all the time on insuring focus and composition. Just later, when Louie strolled by I showed him the pics of the “Hermit” which I had not yet examined. He got very excited and exclaimed “…Black throated Green….”
The light was pretty crummy.
