Perhaps the coolest birding moment of 2020 happened early in the season but I didn’t realize it until I saw the photo on the computer. I was photographing this Mountain Chickadee as it perched briefly. There were a few snowflakes coming down but there were also plenty of breaks in the clouds. The first photo where I noticed the snowflake was actually the one I took before this one when the snow flake was still in the air. Then I saw this image. It is cropped a bit from the original image but held up well.

I chose this image at the insistence of my wife. While I loved the branches, background, and light, I wished the warbler was more visible. But she liked how the bird was peeking at me through the foliage, so her vote carried it. Another reason I chose this image though is because Yellow Warblers had been a bit of a Holy Grail bird for me. Though common, I hadn’t had a lot of success photographing them until this summer. While I did come away with images with the subject more prominent in the photo, I still preferred this one due to the reasons mentioned already.