It was another hot sunny morning. I went to the local wetland, where I had't been for a while, to look for Yellow-breasted Chat. I didn't find any. I suspect it'll take a number of outings with concentrated effort to find one. They're apparently easiest to find this time of year, so I may have to wait until next year if I can't find one soon.

What I did find, or hear rather, was some Sora. I'm counting it as a new lifer, even though I didn't see one. This (like the Virginia Rail we have here) might be much harder to actually see than a Yellow-breasted Chat. But I did hear at least three distinct individuals calling to each other, and I managed to get a usuable audio recording of them. I'm not sure how to best go about photographing rails... more research is needed. But it was fun to stand and listen to three separate species calling from the reeds, none of which were visible! There were at least three each of Sora, Virgina Rail, and American Bittern all calling out sporadically.

At one point, there was also an interesting area of gravel path about a hundred yards ahead of me. A few Purple Martins kept flying in circles around the area and landing there. Maybe there were a lot of ants or someone had dropped bird seed or something. I took some photos of the flying Purple Martins when they were reasonably close and with the light hitting them from a good angle. The sunlight was so harsh the photos didn't work that well, but I got a couple shots that I'm happy with.

These photos are © 2023 Phil Thompson, all rights reserved.

My "birds in review" collages can be found here.