Canada Warbler by Michelle Davis
August 30, 2021
As August rolls into September our species diversity is slowly climbing. We have added Chuck-will’s Widow and Traill’s flycatcher to the roster, while the pace of the Caribbean-wintering warblers is picking up. Today we banded 19 new birds of 8 species and captured one returning Ovenbird, banded in Fall 2020. The weather was bright and hot but there were birds around anyways, and they stayed active all morning. Blue-gray gnatcatchers were up in the canopy evading capture, and a couple of them (plus a Prairie warbler) were singing a little bit. Not with the same enthusiasm as spring, of course, but any song is nice to hear!
We banded our first Black-throated Blue Warbler of the season on August 23, and there will be many more to come. There always are a few early individuals moving through already, but we don’t expect the bulk of the Blues until late September and October.
The star of the day (OK the week) is this young Canada Warbler. We only have banded 11 others out of 40,000 birds so they are not very common here at all. These birds have a slender shape with large eyes, very similar in structure to Hooded Warblers but with a very different color pattern. The big eyes suit their lifestyle in the understory of thick boreal forests in the Northeast and, yes, Canada. They go all the way to northern South America to spend the winter.
Canada Warbler by Michelle Davis
Female Black-throated Blue by Michelle Davis