It's now pushing July, and the warblers have been gone for nearly a month, but I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to tabulate them.
But here, finally, is what I've got -- 13 species, as follows, with the number of each sighted:
- American redstart, 2
- Black-and-white, 6
- Blackpoll, 2
- Black-throated blue, 2
- Cape May, 2
- Common yellowthroat, 12
- Magnolia, 8
- Nashville, 3
- Northern parula, 4
- Ovenbird, 3
- Palm, 1
- Yellow, 9
- Yellow-rumped, 9
All of these species are depicted in the photo mosaic above, kindly put together by my father. (And just to fill out the grid, there are a couple of warblers in there I wasn't able to identify as to species.) All were seen between the fifth and 30th of May, with sightings every day until the last week, where there was a gap of several days. The common yellowthroat was our winner this year, with sightings on 12 different days. While sightings were fairly well distributed throughout the month, May 10th represented a definite high point. That day brought in not only a wave of different warbler species, but the catbirds and chimney swifts as well.
I expanded my field of search beyond Prospect Hill this year, to take in the Mystic, and on one occasion, Alewife Brook. Maybe there are other areas in Somerville warblers are to be seen (the bike path, for example), but I think the Mystic and Prospect Hill are the best bets.
I take it to be the case that the fact of a warbler species appearing in Somerville testifies to the strength of that warbler's numbers in Massachusetts as a whole. To put it another way, we don't get too many rarities here. This year I did see two species I had never logged before (Nashville and Cape May), but the others are ones I see every year -- not exactly like clockwork, but reliably enough.
But the chief thing is that these are all migrants. So far as I can tell, no warbler species breeds here in Somerville. We're merely a corridor for them, a temporary place of rest. In spring, they appear in some strength, in the fall, much less so. Now it's summer, and things have gone quiet again.
