Cape May Warbler

A personal favourite through association, it’s name instantly inspires nostalgia for the halcyon days of my time in that New Jersey paradise. The species’ status for me was elevated even further by the superb Shetland twitch in 2013. Despite that, my memories of males were all of a slightly underwhelming bird when compared to its congeners. How wrong I was, males were breathtaking, if rather variable, and the females were subtly pleasing. Even more surprising was just how common they were at Long Point, with multiple birds seen daily and five males in a single tree at one point. The first British record was of a singingmale in Paisley in 1975, what a sight that must have been. I remember reading about it when I was probably in my teens, never would I have expected to have had so many excellent encounterswith this species, and on both sides of the Atlantic. Birds, eh?