Birds section header Bunting for a Connecticut  At about 7:30am
was on the Penninsula in Prospect Park with Peter Dorosh, Mary
Eyster and Tom Stephenson. The wind was good the night before,
and we were hoping for a Connecticut Warbler, one of the
trickier birds to see in the fall migration. Like the other
Oporornis warblers (Kentucky, Mourning, and Macgillivrays),
Connecticuts are walking warblers: they creep around through the
leaf litter, turning over leaves for bugs. This means that even
if they aren't shy, they are hard to see, because they tend to
be under leafy ground cover. Things were looking good, with some
nice warbler activity in the trees around us. We had been there
for about half-an-hour, carefully searching the good habitat
that the Penninsula provides, when a bird called out about
twenty feet away. Warbler calls like this are less common in the
fall, when birds aren't defending or defining breeding or
feeding territories, or trying to attract a mate. More
significantly, the call was distinct a