If you are impatient and scroll to the bottom of this blog just to see a bittern, brown creeper, and winter wren, you will miss most of the fun of the experience.
I hiked the Linny Levin Trail at the Zebedee Wetlands in Thetford, Vermont Sunday. This is a beautiful area preserved by the Upper Valley Land Trust. Entering straight in to the east, the footing is a bit tricky. Walking a few planks is not hard, but there is a penalty to be paid for a slip.
Heading up the trail a bit I decided to go wild with my camera hoping it would bring me luck spotting some elusive brown birds that I have seen here in previous years. (Bear with me, we will get to the birds shortly.)
I heard an American Bittern here 5 days earlier, but on that trip all I was able to photography were Green-winged Teal.
Bitterns are masters at camouflage. They stand very still, tall, and straight pretending they are dried marsh plants. They can be very near and still nearly impossible to spot. Can you find the American Bittern in the photo below?
How about in the photo below?
Perhaps in this one.
Here he is! All of the photos above and below of the bittern were taken from the same distance to the bittern.
While I was photographing the bittern, Yellow-rumped Warblers and Ruby-crowned Kinglets were working the trees at the edge of the marsh.
Farther along the trail I saw a little brown something moving quickly up a tree. It was too high to photograph, but I knew it would soon fly to the base of a nearby tree. It did and I managed a few quick shots before the Brown Creeper climbed high then flew out of sight.
It is interesting how colors change from shade (above) to early morning sun (below).
Then there were those darn sneaky Winter Wrens. I must have heard 3 or 4 different ones, but one drove me crazy. It repeatedly sang its long beautiful song only a few yards from me. I spend 10-15 minutes searching in vain for it. If I would have found it, it would probably have looked like this.
Finally back near the entrance, a pair of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers where chasing each other around. I got a photo of one before they vanished into the woods beyond the planks. I figure I wouldn’t test my luck further, so I departed after getting photos of Swamp, White-throated, and Song Sparrows from near the entrance.
