Warbler Workshop
Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary and
Blue Ridge, Asheville, NC
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The weather was suspect before we even headed out this morning, which prevented any major planning. It was just a question of staying ahead of whatever lay in store for us. As usual we started at Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary in North Asheville. Here the warblers were playing very hard to get but some of us ended up with glimpses of Northern Waterthrush, Black-and-white and Magnolia Warblers. Some interesting "chip" notes in the dense thickets led us to believe one of the very hard to see warblers, such as Mourning or Connecticut, was lurking in there. Alas we never got even a glimpse. As rain was imminent we headed straight to Craven Gap where the summer resident Kentucky Warbler refused to show itself. As the rain began we were informed of a tornado warning in the Asheville area, so decided to take a very early lunch at the house where we could watch the weather on TV just in case we had to hide in the basement! Thankfully it never came to that and the rain slackened off allowing us to head back onto the Parkway where we finished the day with some great warbler views. The highlights had to be multiple Cerulean Warblers including a female carefully building a nest platform in a tulip tree- very close to the road. I will have to keep tabs on this for the summer. We ended the day with 16 species of warbler seen or heard- not bad at all for a very peculiar weather day.