I’m going to try to summarize the spring migration that has occurred in our yard over the past few weeks.
In general, the main migration seemed to begin in late April, with large numbers of migrants appearing on April 29 & 30. With regard to warblers, Orange-crowned, Wilson’s and Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s race) provided the greatest numbers of visits.
This is a male Yellow-rumped warbler, Audubon’s race.
This year, for I believe the first time, we had visits by the Myrtle race of Yellow-rumped warblers. This first photo is of a female, the second photo is of a male.
There were several days of rain or cold when I didn’t spend much time in the yard and we didn’t seem to have that many visits. But we then had two more days (May 4 & 5) of high migrant traffic.
This season, in addition to the warblers listed above, we had confirmed/photographed visits from:
- Townsend’s warbler (1 visit)
- Black-throated gray warbler (1 visit)
- Pacific Slope flycatcher (2 days)
- Warbling vireo (2 days)
- Brown-headed cowbird (female; late arrival but now a daily visitor)
- Western tanager (male & female)
- Black-headed grosbeak (male & female)
- House wren (nesting)
We thought we might have seen a MacGillivray’s warbler (twice) and female Yellow warbler (twice), but we couldn’t be sure of the identifications or obtain photographs.
To bring things up to date, as of May 22 we seem to be getting only about one warbler visit per day. The House wren that was in one of our nest boxes apparently fledged young.
A pair of Red-breasted nuthatches raised a family of four young in the vicinity and the parents have been feeding them suet in the yard. About a week ago one of the young ones landed on the lens of my camera, only about five inches from the front of my face, while I was photographing birds in the yard. We have Black-capped chickadees currently occupying a nest box. Another pair were discouraged from using a different nest box by a persistent male House sparrow that was unable to enter the box but was threatening to the nest-building process.
Whew! I’m going to consider myself caught up and not visit the migration again!