Warbler wrap-up, Spring '26

The month of May comes and goes, and with it the warblers in my yard.  This year was not, on the whole, bad -- 28 individuals across 11 species and five genera.  And on one extraordinary day, May 11, I had seven species, including a new one for me, blue-winged warbler.  Did I get a photo?  I did not, and in fact, my photographs for the month were all terrible, including the one above.  The Nashville warbler shown here was a bit of an outlier for me.  It was the first warbler of the spring, and I saw more Nashvilles (three) this year than I had ever seen here in the spring.

Otherwise the year was pretty typical in terms of species.  Magnolia was the winner, with seven separate birds, followed by ovenbird with four.  Then there were the typical visitors: yellow, black-and-white, common yellowthroat, parula, redstart, and blackpoll. But outside of warblers, I saw very little in terms of migrants.

And how about the house sparrows?  Oddly enough, there were not many at the beginning of the month, but they seemed to increase steadily as the month went on.  And now that my neighbors have put feeders up, they are omnipresent.

Warbler wrapup, 2025

2025 was a terrible year for warblers, at least in my yard.  But it was a great year for house sparrows (and house finches, probably for the same reason).  Is there a linkage?  Maybe, but first the paltry count:

Magnolia warbler: 4, at widely spaced intervals (May 1 to May 24)
Common yellowthroat:  4
American redstart:  2
Chestnut-sided warbler: 2 (or one over two days)
Black-throated blue: 1
Ovenbird:  1

I did spend a fair amount of time in the yard, even if I was away a few days in the middle of the month. I think this was actually the worst year ever, since I began paying attention about ten years ago.

So why?  In the past, I've waffled on the question of whether the number of house sparrows has any correlation.  but I've come to believe again that it has.  Bugs and caterpillars are not an endless resource in the neighborhood, and if I have a troupe of house sparrows camped out in my walnut tree day after day, visibly eating all the bugs and caterpillars there -- well, you can do the math.

I also find it telling that last year I had both house wrens and chickadees nesting in my yard. and this year I had neither.  The wren showed up at the beginning of May, sang for a week, and then decamped. And I didn't see that many other migrants, either -- no vireos, no hummingbirds, only a few kinglets, a flycatcher or two.

I have a mind to put up a screech owl box over the winter.  

The predators among us

Here's a new one on me:  a blue jay eating a house sparrow, and with some relish.  If this sparrow was a fledgling, it was pretty well grown.  I didn't see how this started, but my impression is the sparrow was predated elsewhere -- or found dead, I suppose -- and brought into this tree.  The jay ate half of it before inadvertently dropping it, at which point I went to look at it.  But when I retreated, the jay came back to collect the rest of the carcass, and flew off to eat it elsewhere.  That reads as a pretty substantial meal to me.

But now I'm fearing that the chickadee nestlings currently being fed in their box are going to have a rough go of it.

 

Open House

 

I've been a landlord for a long time, and I'm very familiar with the drill every time I show an open unit:  will the prospective tenants take it, or not?  Same goes for the birdhouses I put up.  Carolina wrens have been around my yard for a few weeks, and they've visited this birdhouse inside and out, but... they've yet to make up their minds, I think.

I've had two of these birdhouses up since the previous winter, and they've never been occupied.  They're sized for house wrens, but I don't know of anybody in Somerville who has a house wren.  I've seen exactly one in all my years here, migrating through, by all appearances.  Carolina wren has become much more of a city bird in recent years.  I hear them with some frequency, particularly in Cambridge.  And because they're here year round, they can get a jump on nesting. and grab the best nesting spots before the house wrens come through.

Unless, of course, they lose out to the chickadees...

But actually, I have an older nesting box, made out of a section of tree trunk, that I think the chickadees prefer.  So we'll just have to see, and probably will see, soon.  The cardinals at least are very busy collecting sticks.

 

Warbler wrapup, 2023

 

In the past, I've fretted about my year's warbler numbers going up and down, but I think I've finally realized that one observer, in one small yard in Somerville, is just way too small a lens.  That said, my numbers were decent this year -- 26 individuals, across nine species.  And I was even away for a critical window, from the 6th to the 9th of May (I was in Cape May, New Jersey, where, ironically enough, I saw almost no warblers, despite some diligent looking).

Magnolia was the winner this year, with six individuals, across a range of days.  Common yellowthroat was just behind, with five, then four black-and-whites, and four ovenbirds.  Those patterns have been pretty typical over the years.  But unusually this year, I had three new species for Somerville:  Canada, Tennessee, and bay-breasted.  Unfortunately, I only got pictures of the Tennessee, and they were of a quality I would describe as sub-masterpiece:

These sightings were all from my yard, since I scarcely ventured out into Somerville to look for warblers elsewhere.  And beyond warblers, there wasn't much -- more hummingbirds than usual, a few flycatchers, and that was that.  The last flycatcher showed up on June 8th, which seemed unusually late.  Somebody forgot to make themselves a calendar alert, I guess.

Neither Moscow nor mallard

 

Weird stuff fetches up by the Mystic.  I've seen, over the years, a chicken, a greylag goose,  and now today, the latest in feral waterfowl, a Muscovy duck.  This is not a bird that's particularly on my radar, and so I would know nothing about it if it weren't for Wikipedia.  So, for the record, this creature is a duck native to the Americas south of the Rio Grande, known to scientists as Cairina moschata, and known in the barnyard as Mucovy duck, or Barbary duck -- because, of course, it has nothing to do with either Moscow or the Barbary Coast.  It has long been domesticated, and like all domesticated fowl, comes in a wide variety of formats.

Now, you can say it's not a Massachusetts species, and still less a Somerville species, but I don't care -- it's going on my list.

The Ovenbird

 

Ovenbirds constitute a distinct season in my yard -- about ten days after the first week of May.  There's a part of my yard that's irresistibly attractive to them, a shady lane (of blacktop, this being Somerville), with a cedar fence on one side and a thick shrubbery on the other.  I doubt there's another person in Somerville who boasts a yard so magnetic to ovenbirds.  It's a small distinction, but I'm pleased with it, out of affection for the ovenbird.

Ovenbird was not, by the way, the only monotypic warbler in my yard today. Shame on you if you can't think of the other one.

Warbler wrapup, Spring 2020

I made a discovery this spring: the more time I spend in my yard, the more warblers I see.

In years past, I've worried about declining warbler numbers, at least as they manifest locally.  I've blamed house sparrows, and while it's true that sparrows compete with warblers for food, and on occasion harass them, I've come to doubt that there's a tight linkage between the number of sparrows and the number of warblers that pass through.  There are a ton of other factors that affect how many warblers I see, starting with level of effort, of course, but including such things as weather, overall population numbers, and even local vegetation patterns (for example, this last year I lost my apple tree, which was a bit of a bird magnet).

Just taking what I saw in and from my yard, I counted the following:

Black and white, 10
Black-throated blue, 2
Cape May, 2
Magnolia, 2
Ovenbird, 6
Northern parula, 1
American redstart, 3
Wilson's, 1
Yellow, 3
Common yellowthroat, 9
Yellow-rumped, 1

There are a few others I was unable to identify, or only heard singing, and some of these birds may have been continuing birds that got counted twice, but in general, I feel like this was a pretty representative year:  11 species, across five genera.  Ovenbird was the curtain-raiser, on May 3, and American redstart brought the season to a close on June 1 -- rather later than usual.

I also spent some time at the Mystic and Alewife Brook, and saw some species there that I didn't see in my yard:  chestnut-sided, prairie, and Blackburnian.

All taken in all, I saw the species I expected to see, with a few exceptions:  blackpoll, palm, and pine.  And I even added a new one for my Somerville list, in Blackburnian warbler.

Black-throated blue times two

There's a great deal about warbler migration that's a mystery to me.  But I had a piece of luck today that helped me answer at least one question that's been bothering me:  namely, do individual warblers hang around my yard for more than one day?  I'd always suspected that the answer was sometimes yes.

It happens that on Monday of this week, I saw a black-throated blue warbler in the yard.  And on Tuesday.  And on Wednesday.  So were they they same individual?

By luck, I got photos on both Tuesday and Wednesday of the bird in the same posture at about the same location.

Here's Tuesday:

And here's Wednesday:

Now, looking at pictures of this species on Google, I see that the white wing patch is a bit individual: in some birds, it looks kind of like Iowa, where in others it's a bit more South Carolina, and so forth.

So here's a closeup of the wing patches from the pictures above:

I make it as the same bird. No?

Meanwhile, in other news, a pair of mourning doves has been nesting outside my back door, and they have been on the nest for what seems like forever.

Ms. Blackburne's Warbler

I was standing today by Alewife Brook, peering into a tree full of warblers, when a driver stopped at the light called out to me, "I think that's a blackburnian warbler." Bless me if she wasn't right.

The regulars are out

Yesterday I was doing a little black-and-white photography, with mediocre results, though the bird was only three feet from me.  But what she was doing was fascinating.  I know black-and-white warbler as a bark-creeper, usually working its way up the bole of a tree, or a large branch.  But this one did something novel -- she spent about five minutes creeping about under a mat of ivy on the ground, like a mouse, and even did a little spelunking in the hollows at the base of my wall. 

There have also been a few common yellowthroats about over the last few days:

Wednesday was a pretty good day around here.  After days of dreary weather, the sun came out, and migrants with it:  the yellowthroat above, plus yellow warbler and northern parula, and a couple of others I don't usually see -- blue-headed vireo, ruby-throated hummingbird, and this oriole:

Requiem

This morning, looking out my front door, I saw something tumble into the leaves below the building across the street.  I went to have a look. Splayed in the leaves was this hermit thrush.  It must have struck a window in the building and been killed instantly -- one of the millions of birds killed annually by collisions with buildings.  The unnerving thing is that there is nothing particular about the windows of this building, a three-story brick apartment building of the most anonymous kind.  When we hear about buildings lethal to birds, we tend to imagine tall buildings with large sheets of plate glass.

But the sad truth is, any window can be a fatal one.

One fine day

Yesterday, walking down by the Mystic, as I often do on Sunday, I saw an unusual diversity of birds, and in unusual abundance.  Being between seasons, we still have summer birds here, but winter birds (juncos and white-throated sparrows) have shown up, a bit early, and meanwhile you have a large number of migrants passing through.

The photos below show a sampling of what I was able to see.  This isn't the complete roster -- it's more the complete roster of what I was able to get an adequate photo of.

First up, golden-crowned kinglet:

And its tyrannical cousin, the ruby-crowned kinglet:

Let's not neglect sparrows.  Here's savannah sparrow:

And dark-eyed junco:

Flycatchers are represented by eastern phoebe:

Turning to warblers, pine warblers were present in some numbers, many of them flocking with white-throated sparrows and kinglets.

The other typical late migrant is yellow-rumped warbler:

And finally common yellowthroat:

Then we have herons.  Great blue heron is here in season and out, though they're generally less morose than this:

But black-crowned night heron is a more episodic character.  I haven't seen them much lately, and the few I've seen have been juveniles like this one:

And then finally, because Sunday is the day for puzzles, I have this:

I can't even swear this is a bird.  If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments section.

Better late than never

I was pretty pleased with myself to get a picture of this yellowthroat with my phone.  Usually yellowthroats are pretty retiring and hard to photograph, but this one was being loud and proud in a backyard on Willow Ave. 

Warblers in general were very late this year.  I saw the first one (Wilson's, unusually) on the 15th, though admittedly I was away the previous three days.  I haven't seen a single ovenbird or black-and-white, which is a departure from previous years.  Today in the yard I had a redstart...

as well as a Swainson's thrush:

And then there was this creature, which, on a good hare day, may be perceived as a bunny rabbit:

Chewink

Ah, spring.  Hence this chewink, a bird not viewable in Somerville except during the migration, and rarely at that.  Hence also this hermit thrush...

...and this phoebe.

These latter two are regular spring visitors, particularly the hermit thrush, which appears like clockwork in mid-April.  Of the three, the phoebe is the only one I know to nest in Somerville, near the banks of Alewife Brook.

Eagle

This photo won't win any prizes, but it shows a conjunction of two Somerville rarities: bald eagle at left, and common loon at right (along with both common and red-breasted merganser, also at right).  I don't know if this is the same eagle that was here last year, and I haven't checked to see if it's still around, but it may well be.  It came onto the ice (this was last weekend) to peck at a scrap of something loathsome.

At the eagle's approach, the gulls all freaked out and took to the air, but interestingly, the ducks seemed completely unfazed, and approached without fear:

(These are mostly mallards, with a few black ducks and mergansers thrown in.)  I read in Wikipedia that certain populations of bald eagle prey heavily on mallards -- but our local ducks appear not to know, or not to care.  Certainly to my eyes they looked vastly more appetizing than whatever the eagle was busy with.

Questionable anser

Yesterday, doing some back-to-school shopping at the Assembly Square Mall, I went and had a look at the river, and there was this goose.  It was there again today, among a dozen-strong flock of Canada geese.  Now, there's no question about the identity of this bird:  It's Anser anser, the greylag goose.  But after that things get a bit murky.

The greylag goose is not, after all, an American bird.  It's a Eurasian species that nests in the northern half of Europe and Asia, and migrates to the south of Asia, the Mediterranean, and North Africa.  Occasionally a vagrant fetches up in North America.  Is the bird above one such?  Maybe, but it's impossible to say.  It happens that the greylag goose is the ancestor of the domestic goose, a certain number of which have gotten loose in this country and gone feral.  The domestics are usually white -- like the notorious Charles River white geese -- or splotched with white.  But not always; some have the coloration of wild greylags.  The domestics are also said to be heavier-bottomed, but again, it's hard with an individual animal out on the river to assess its bottom-heaviness.

Just based on the probabilities, this is a feral animal, maybe some generations removed from the barnyard.  And in a sense, the question is purely academic, because wild greylags and those of domestic stock are the same species anyway.  But this is the first one I've ever seen in Somerville.

What are the chances?

Today there was a really weird assemblage of birds in my neighbor's tree.  The first one was this kinglet, above.  I usually see kinglets in the yard, but in April, not late May.  This bird didn't get the memo, apparently.

Then, a few minutes later, this:

This one is Wilson's warbler.  'Tis the season, I suppose, but I hadn't seen one in years.

Cue the next one:

Cedar waxwing, which I see singly basically never, and in my yard basically never.

And then finally, way in the top of the tree, for only a minute:

I'm pretty sure this is some kind of tyrant flycatcher, but it's hard to narrow it down beyond that.

This says something about the value of a single mature tree, even of a despised species like Norway maple. This particular tree looms over my yard and rains branches down on it, and moreover produces a million seedlings every year.  But I still would hate to see it go.

Sparrow Desert

Earlier today, I was looking at a list I made in May, 2014 of migrants I had seen in my yard.  And I was struck by the fall-off in numbers from 2014 to today.  By this time of the month in 2014, I had seen dozens of individuals across ten species of warbler.  This year, I've seen maybe five individuals across two species.  So what on earth happened?

I could be completely off base, but I'm blaming sparrows.  Bird feeders have caused the number of house sparrows to explode in this neighborhood.  Their numbers are up maybe tenfold or more over three years ago.  And as sparrow numbers go up, might not the number of everything else -- most conspicuously May migrants -- go down?  As sparrows' spring diet turns from seeds to insects, they start hoovering bugs out of all the trees and shrubs in the neighborhood, leaving the the larder somewhat bare.

If you're wondering whether sparrows could really have this much effect on insect populations, consider what happened in China during the Great Leap Forward.  When Mao tabbed the Eurasian tree sparrow (a species closely related to our own invasive house sparrow) as one of the Four Pests to be eliminated, people began persecuting the sparrow with such enthusiasm that the species was nearly wiped out.  Result?  Locust populations, previously kept in check by sparrows, boomed.  The ensuing famine killed at least 25 million people.

So if you're worried about locusts, by all means, keep a feeder.  But if you're worried about our native birds, particularly during their migration, consider the effect of your feeder on the local ecology.  It's instructive to take a walk around the block in Prospect Hill, and really listen for what birds you hear around you.  I think you'll be shocked at the omnipresence, and sheer numbers, of house sparrows.

Out with the old

The Mystic on Sunday offered a mix of the old and the new.  On the new side were blackbirds and grackles, here for several weeks already, as well as the more recently arrived cormorants and tree swallows.  Representing the old, we still had a few winter birds hanging around: a couple flocks of coots, a solitary bufflehead, and these mergansers -- surely the last -- two hundred yards below the dam.

And then there was an odd diving duck I couldn't make out with my naked eye.  You see it in the upper left of the photo above.  I was astonished at how long it could stay underwater, and what a distance it could travel -- a hundred yards at a stroke.

It wasn't until I got home and looked at my pictures that I realized what it was:

Now, you can disparage my identification skills as much as you like, but in all justice, you have to admit that I had the phylum correct.