Hermit
Warbler, Setophaga occidentalis
Guided by my friend and savvy Arizona birder Dick Carlson, I was lucky enough to get my life photographs of a Hermit Warbler, the male shown above and below, two days apart, in Rose Canyon at about 7000 feet on Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson in the spring of 2011; the bird was passing through the area in migration.
These warblers are regular California nesters, especially in the Sierras, but they are hard to see, usually foraging high in tall trees, so that in six annual summer trips to Yuba Pass I had never been able to photograph one. It was only on my seventh visit there, the year after I had my first luck with the species in Arizona, that I finally got this photo of a partly obscured Hermit Warbler; like the Arizona bird, it was at about 7000 feet. The absence of a black throat patch identifies this bird as a female.