Today was a good day

I went to work the salt pond quickly this morning. First up I finally caught up with a stilt sandpiper. Well actually 6 of them. I almost overlooked these - I thought they were yellowlegs initially and suddenly woke up and paid a bit more attention with good results.

I would have happily taken one more new bird on the list from the session but then I got a real bonus. I heard a warbler call and actually managed to see it (not easy in the thickleaved mangroves) - it looked like this:

At this point my plan of photographing all warblers kicked in and its a good job I did. My instinct looking at the book was to call this as a pine warbler which would be new not only for me but the whole island. That seemed unlikely (though by no means impossible) and the experts onbirdforum confirmed I was wrong and showed me why. The end result? #93 Blackpoll warbler joins the list.