Chestnut-sided Warbler, Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, Oak Harbor, Ohio

Tonight after we closed up at Optics Alley
at the Biggest Week in American Birding,
the warblers on the boardwalk at Magee
Marsh were working as close as you will
ever see them, closer than you will ever
see them anywhere other than Magee. Cape
May, Blackburnian, Chestnut-sided, Black-throated
Blue, Magnolia, Black-throated Green, all within
feet and at, or below, eye-level, and lots of
Ovenbirds scurrying around in the leaf-litter
right under the boardwalk…but it was so
dark, with the lateness of the day and the
heavy overcast, in those dense swampy woods
that the camera struggled to focus and strained
at the limits of exposure. Still who could
resist those bright bodies in the dim light
teasing our trigger fingers and filling memory
cards, hoping against hope for those intimate
portraits of busy warblers at arm’s length.

Like I said in the poem…who can resist. This is an ISO 2500 shot, certainly pushing the limits of my Sony’s 1 inch sensor, but still…such a bird and such a pose! Chestnut-sided Warbler, close and totally unconscious of the admiring humans on the boardwalk at Magee Marsh. This is what the Biggest Week in American Birding is all about. Sony RX10iv at 600mm. Program mode. 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 2500. Processed in Polarr.