ABA's Bird of the Year

By Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren - Golden-winged Warbler, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63976506

The American Birding Association (ABA) names a Bird of the Year every January. This year's bird is the Golden-winged Warbler. A pretty bird, although not one that hangs out in our area. But that's ok. The bird does range through much of the eastern part of the country, to include Sabine Woods, a Texas Ornithological Society sanctuary in east Texas. 

I bring this up to highlight the ABA. I am a member because they do a lot of bird conservation. The magazine is beautiful and interesting, although it tends to be more technical than many other birding magazines. ABA also has an interesting bird podcast. I try not to read the book reviews--I would have to get another job to support my bird book habit. And more shelf space.

Warblers are challenging birds to identify, mostly because they are constantly on the move. I have a hard enough time catching a glimpse of them, let alone identify or take a picture of one. I used to go birding with a lady named Dorothy when I lived in Virginia. She could see a warbler for a second and tell  you what it was, but she had spent decades banding birds and had written a book about warblers, so there was a good reason for that. We were out one day and I asked her the identity of a duck out on the lake. She said, "It's a duck." She said she hadn't spent much time working on her identification skills with ducks, so she had a difficult time identifying them. I can honestly say, I do reasonably well with ducks, but other than a few very distinctive species, warblers stump me much of the time. But I enjoy watching them anyway.

Good birding!