Dan's Feathursday Feature: Prothonotary Warbler

The Bird that Brought Down a Spy

It was a wet and rainy day....

Sounds like the beginning of a very bad novel. Actually, it was May 9 at a Chicago lakefront park several years ago—a cold, wet and miserable morning. But I was committed to a little research project at Park 566—the park with no name—so I bundled up, put a plastic shopping bag over my camera, and started on my regular route along the lakeshore. The wind was very strong off the lake, and after about a quarter mile or so, I was getting pretty wet and cold from the spray. There's a raised berm that follows the shoreline, and I decided to walk the inland side of the berm, for some protection from the wind and spray.

And that's where I saw my first ever Prothonotary Warbler. I couldn't believe my eyes.

This is a bird that hangs out in the dense understory of wooded swamps and hardwood forests near ponds and streams. But here it was, on one of the most miserable days of May, foraging in the treeless, still mostly brown and desolate grassland of the park-with-no-name. Like me, it was hugging the leeward side of the berm, as it flitted from stalk to stalk in search of insects.

What a beautiful bird! And on a dark, rainy morning, it felt as if the sun had just come out.

....but it hadn't, and between the wind and the spray, I had a hard time keeping the camera dry and steady enough to get a few photos. Looking at the photos later, I understood the bird's hunting tactics. It positioned itself on dry stalks next to spider webs, and it was raiding those webs—the ensnared insects as well as the spiders themselves.

Some Cold War intrigue surrounds the Prothonotary Warbler. It was responsible for putting Alger Hiss behind bars in 1948 for spying for the Soviets. Hiss was an avid birder, and even when on trial, he couldn't contain his excitement at having seen this rare bird. It proved to be his undoing. It's too long a story to recount here; just Google Alger Hiss and the Prothonotary Warbler for the rest of the story.

While you do that, I think I’ll head to Park 566. It’s a wet and rainy day. Perfect!

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.