#2 Ceruleans

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Cerulean Warbler. Wiki photo by mdf

My Favorite Nature Moments of 2013.

Arguably, the most beautiful hard-to-find bird in my area is the cerulean warbler. They are not here in January, so don't go looking for them. All of the ceruleans in the entire universe—as we know it—are in the mountains of Venezuela and Columbia south to Ecuador and Peru and possibly into portions of Bolivia, i.e. the higher elevations of northern South America. They are all fattening up, waiting to return to the states in the spring as soon as these Arctic clippers cease and desist. And the yellow-green blush returns to the canopy.

The males ceruleans arrive first to claim territory and they like the high ridges in the Cumberlands. 

Last April, I accompanied Tiffany Beachy to Royal Blue, specifically to several plots she monitored from 2005 to '07, as part of her cerulean warbler field research under the tutelage of Dr. David Buehler with the University of Tennessee.

For more on that outing, click: Ceruleans in April.

 
This one's for you, Emily and Than. Thanks, Tiffany.

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