Warblers are irritating, and that's the truth.
It's a beautiful spring morning, the mist just disappearing and the sun promising a full Monty. I take my binoculars and stroll quietly down to the mailboxes and, just like yesterday, I hear a yellow warbler singing full bore, whichety, whichety, whichety.
Where? Must be right there in that bush. But I can't see it. No.
She/he emerges, flitting from branch to branch veiled by the baby yellow-green leaves of spring, barely hatched.
The sound has moved. I try to scan with the binoculars. The sound is close, here by my ear - no, over there to the right, whichety, whichety, whichety.
Out of the corner of my right eye I see a tease of yellow.
OK, be like that. I'll try another spot.
I walk slowly up the trail, listening for sound, looking for another swipe of yellow - or any color on the wing - and at the crest of the hill right there on the lowest branch of the big maple, right where the branch hangs out over the turn in the trail, I see a myrtle warbler.
The creature deigns to pause long enough for me to be sure: black-and-white sides, a little cap of yellow on the head, a yellow rump. (Myrtle warblers are also known as Yellow-rumped warblers.)
And he opens his tiny beak to let out a peal of notes before - oops, gone!
But not really gone, because I now can hear him to the far side of me.
I catch another fleeting glimpse, and then I see two of them. They disappear into the bushes. I don't hold much hope of finding a warbler in a thicket of leaves and weeds, but I am slowly scanning the area with my binoculars, about a foot off the ground, when I see the nest.
* * *
If I lower the glasses, I can't see anything in that bundle of quivering green, but fortunately I have not moved from the spot and I am staying very still.
Feet frozen to the ground, I find them again with the binoculars. There are two of them, flying in and out in rapid succession, making maybe 10 landings a minute with a bit of reed or dried grass.
The male warbler - I think it's the male, a little bigger and brighter than his mate - hops right into the nest, which holds his shape like a cup. He turns around and around, molding the shape to his body, then out and away. Only a few seconds later, she appears and does the same.
The nest is in the crotch of a tree, and I take time to notice the way in which a few of the wider grasses have been used to strap the nest to the branches on either side. It is a very neat nest, and as they work on it, it grows higher.
It grows until I can see only the tip of a perky tail or a touch of yellow on the head as they twist and turn within the bowl they have created.
* * *
And then the curious arrive.
On a branch at eye level, quite plain to see, a yellow-throated warbler announces his joy in the day. Across the road, a dark-eyed, brown bird - rather shy but not too shy to fly away - crosses the road and checks me out. He's a veery, I discover, when I look him up in my Sibley bird reference.
To the left, a robin flies over; in the woods, I can hear the rusty-hinge caw-caw of a pair of those blue jays who are probably full of my bird seed.
And all in the space of 20 minutes.
I am still stiff and frozen to the spot. I don't dare to move. What will appear next? But no one new shows up.
The industrious myrtle warblers are still at it, so I try to mark the spot where I am standing without making enough commotion to scare off the next person-watcher bird.
And I wander home - a little dazed, a little satiated, a little intoxicated with the beauty of May and those irritating little warblers.