Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Five Canada Warblers, a Chestnut-Sided and an Alder Flycatcher

All moving through in two hours this weekend.

We are way in the tail end of the migration bell curve by now, the vast majority of them approximately one billion Neotropical migrants going north, the survivors of the about three billion staring south in late summer, are already well up North where most of you guys live. The sequence is predictable, each species having its own bell curve of passage within the total bell curve. Around here migration closes out with flycatchers and Canada warblers.

Its always a surprise how quick spring migration picks up, and how quickly the show is over. Just two weeks back it was still prime time, 40 million little birds a night crossing the Gulf, by next week it will indeed be all over.

After all these years picked up my first alder flycatcher this weekend, a lifer. I've prob'ly seen a bunch before, its just that it looks about exactly like a willow flycatcher, a drab little bird. You can only tell 'em apart by habitat, breeding range, and voice and they are mostly quiet when they ain't actually breeding. This one was calling. Anyways, this is what an Alder flycatcher looks like, pretty much like what every other flycatcher in the genus Empidonax looks like.... (all these photos lifted off of the 'net)



I dunno why Canada warblers are the last warbler through after most all the other warbler species, likewise colorful little birds that eat bugs, have gone ahead. They really do nest mostly in Canada, in wet brushy undergrowth. Likewise I dunno why they are among the first to go back south in July and early August. Nor do I know why they have to go clear to the slopes of the Andes to spend the off-season, but if I seen five in the same area in two hours that means we were absolutely inundated with migrating Canada warblers around here this weekend.



The chestnut-sided was a bit late for a chestnut-sided. She was a female so that helps, males gotta get there first to claim a territory. Like all chestnut-sided she was hopping through the foliage peering at the underside of leaves, because that is how chesnut-sideds feed; picking insects off of the bottom of leaves. They don't go clear to South America, most stop in Central America. In North America they breed in open brushy areas in the early stages of succession. Again, why a warbler that picks bugs off the bottom of leaves happens to be especially suited for breeding in open brushy area I have no idea.



Figure about 150 miles a night average, by next weekend all these guys oughtta be about 1,000 miles north of here in Nebraska or the Dakotas, ten days and 1,500 miles put them on the breeding grounds in the first week of June,

Around here next weekend the spring migration show will be about over. OK, about 1,000,000,000 migrants total every spring means a lot of stragglers, beat the bushes and you can still find some beat-up looking ones having trouble around here until early June, or even the odd one all summer if it comes to that, but it ain't really worth your time to look.

Show's over until next year, picking up beginning in early April. I can never get excited by the return passage of the Arctic shorebirds through here beginning around July 4th, which means its all over until dove season opens September 1. Two weeks after that hawk migration through the Coastal Bend will pick up big time. Until then I pretty much hang up my binocs.

Birdwatcher