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.