Manitoba, Carman and area (1 Viewer)

[Craig S]

Off and on week for birding, but today was pretty exceptional. Today also was the start of our participation in a 5 year province wide bird atlasing program. We have two 10 square kilometer areas to observe for the next 5 years.
Also received a 500mm mirror lens today and was fairly pleased with it. This lens is totally manual and focusing is a bit of a problem, but all but 1 of 49 pictures I took were usable, but definatley not of great quality. With practice I think we can do better, but, focusing will always be a problem.
Also sighted what was likely a Martin swimming the river.
Birds sighted today:
10+ Dark Eyed Juncos
4 Mallards
3 Downy Woodpeckers
4 Canada Geese, heard more further along the river.
10+ Cedar Waxwings
6+ Pine siskins
10+ House sparrows
4 Blue Jays
4 Gold Finches
8 White Breasted Nuthatches
1 Fox Sparrow
3 Yellow Rumped Warblers
1 Blackpoll Warbler ( a new bird for us)
30+ Robins
6 Black Capped Chickadees
There were so many birds today I'm certain there were more that we saw but couldn't identify by sight or get pictures of.
Have attached one picture of a Yellow Rumped Warbler about 30' into the heavy bush. Didn't turn out to bad for a mirror lens. Auto focus in this area is pretty useless because of the thick brush, manual focus with the E510, even with my 70-300 lens, is difficult and the pictures are never as sharp as auto focus.
No editing on this picture other than resizing to attachment size. Resizing darkens picture a tad and decreases sharpness a bit.

 

[Reuven_M]

Come on, I haven't even gotten yellow-rumped yet, and you're getting them in Manitoba!
Are you sure about the blackpoll, as far as I know this would be an extraordinarily early sighting as they don't normally arrive here until mid or late may (black-and-white would be a lot less remarkable)?

 

[Craig S]

We see several Yellow Rumped Warblers everyday, there is no mistaking them.
The Blackpoll Warbler was one female, but we haven't seen it since.
Could it be that you are in an urban area, we seldom see the Yellow Rumped Warblers in town, even during the summer, but, in the bush area I go to outside of town they have been there for at least a week now.

 

[Reuven_M]

No, I see lots of yellow-rumped warblers here (a flock of several hundred last fall!) and lots of other warblers, it is just still a bit early for them, so it is pretty much luck on whether you see one or not yet. (I've had pine warblers already though)

 

[Craig S]

Spring arrived very early here this year, Canada Geese were coming back in droves early in March, even saw a few Robins early in March.