By November most of our migratory songbirds have left for warmer lodging further south. White-throated Sparrows and White-crowned Sparrows left my yard long ago. The colorful warblers and tanagers, noisy blackbirds, melodic thrushes, and sallying flycatchers are similarly gone. But it is still possible to find a few stragglers, a few left-behinds from summer that haven’t given up this northern latitude yet. My neighborhood still hosts a flock of American Robins and a small number of these birds may spend the winter here as they have done in the past. Today I saw a surprise straggler on a rocky, almost treeless breakwater at a sailing club. There, forging among four small Austrian Pine trees at the end of the breakwater, was this fall plumaged Blackpoll Warbler. Seeing and photographing this lingering warble of summer so late in the season will surely be one of my highlights of the fall.