Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Spring Migration summary

Thanks for posting those photos and info Mike. Always learn something from your posts.

I’m always amazed at how far birds migrate.

Ya well, that male redstart in the photo might be hard up.

Females prefer the ones with the reddest wing and tail patches, a measure of "fitness". How red their wing and tail patches are depends on how well they ate after breeding the previous summer when they were moulting and replacing those feathers. Those observant redstart fathers that bred late after maybe losing a first nest, or maybe even bred twice, end up feeding fledged young when they should be concentrating on eating well enough to get all redded up for the following round next year.

But no worries, only about half of 'em are gonna survive the trip back to the Tropics and back anyway. Tough world out there.

I was able to photo the first Gray-cheeked Thrush I saw and I got a pic of the Scarlet Tanager today.

I have yet to see a redstart this year but hopefully soon. We usually have them in my development.

I wish I knew “tweety birds” better.

Nothing crazy, but in last week we have been covered up with goldfinches. Also frequenting the feeders have been cardinals, Baltimore Orioles. Rose breasted grosbeaks, Mourning dove, red wing blackbirds, blue jays, robins, indigo buntings, red bellies woodpeckers, summer tanager on the fountain, bluebirds nesting in their houses, one nest of black capped chickadees in a bluebird house.

The common nighthawk, familiar to most everyone, flushed a pair while walking the dogs....



I always figured the males just displayed and mated with females, like in hummingbirds, after all they only have two young at a time and the males are up there, displaying and diving in the evening. Turns out though it takes both the male and female to raise just two young and the males are territorial. The number of young per brood is probl'y so low on account of the evening/dawn foraging window is so narrow, they can't capture enough large insects in that short amount of time.

Nighthawks can actually cool their eggs when they sit on them by means of air sacs under the skin of their bellies, important in open situations like flat rooftops or on the ground. They can also move their eggs and small young to follow the shade.

The big thing about 'em though is that they are one of our longest distance migrants, flying clear to the southernmost third of South America, on the far side of the Brazilian rain forests. Common bird in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina in our winter. No one knows why they go that far. Their near relative down here, the Lesser Nighthawk which looks just like it but which has a very different display, only goes as far as Mexico and Honduras.

Nice pics, haven't seen a male scarlet tanager in years, I did see a female this morning tho.

Nothing to it, ya look though binocs then if you have to find one in the book that looks just like it

Looks like you already know quite a few species already.

Summer tanagers are thick as thieves down here, mature males have been here close to a month already, the red and blotchy green first year males are just now arriving.

Saw my first of the year chestnut-sided warbler and great crested flycatcher today.

Hey Mike, managed to get the glasses on the bird bothering the swallow nest box. Best I can figure it's an ash throated flycatcher. Sibley says they are cavity nesters. Maybe it wants that box badly. So far, the swallows are winning.

ETA: nighthawks haven't made it up here yet. Wonder if ours go all the way down to Argentina too?

If they are the nighthawks that fly up in the sky, say "peeeent!" and then dive and zoom they are common nighthawks and they go clear south of the rain forest. If they mostly stay lower, are a bit slower and make a trilling sound, they are lesser nighthawks and only go as far as Guatemala/Honduras. Lesser nighthawks are desert birds, we get both on account of San Antonio is so hot and dry in summer.

Easy solution to the next box problem, put up another one. The flycatcher will probably win, and when it does it will fill up the whole nest box cavity with nesting material and then build a nest on top of that by the entrance. Weird, but that's what they do.

Any summer tanagers over your way? Been some cruising thru over here to your east.

My wife and I saw a painted bunting this past Saturday. First one ever. Beautiful bird.

Nice photos, seems like most birders have cameras with 'em nowadays.

Before I came to Texas I thought the great-crested flycatcher was unique, turns out its just one of a crowd. Down here we also have the similar but slightly larger brown-crested flycatcher and the similar but smaller ash-throated flycatcher, all inside the city limits, and in the case of the great-crested and brown-crested, even in the same woods. This not counting half a dozen other variations on the same theme in Mexico and Central America.


Chestnut-sideds are as improbable a bird as are cerulean warblers. Birds of second-growth woodlands and successional forest edges, rare and local in Audubon's day before the White guys came and cut down everything. Almost the whole population used to winter in and around Honduras, where I understand they are still abundant in winter today.

The chestnut-sideds particular thing is they are adapted to pick insects off of the underside of leaves, which accounts for their often horizontal head down tail-up posture. Why that works especially well in brush and second growth I have no idea, neither do I know why that lifestyle selects for a largely white warbler with a very dissimilar, duller juvenile.

Last time I checked, the chestnut-sideds closest relative is the ubiquitous yellow warbler, which apparently breeds in willows along watercourses everywhere in North America but Texas, clear up to Pt. Barrow. The vast Taiga/Tundra population is flooding through here, even as we speak, just kicked off in the last week.(photos lifted off the 'net).




'Nother probable far northern representative of a species that also breeds in and around wetlands all over was the Common Yellowthroat I saw foraging in mesquite today, if he can average 150 miles a night he'll be 2,000 miles north into the Canadian boonies in about two weeks,

Can't hardly throw a rock without hitting one (slight exaggeration).

Point of interest, they are wasp specialists, like them more'n anything else.

Indeed.they are common here but can be surprisingly hard to see.

Eight years back I was up in Oklahoma helping a guy put geolocators on purple martins. These micro devices record light intensity, time and date. They run for more than a year. The way it works is you catch the bird when it returns the following year and remove the device. The exact time of sidereal noon will give you the location on earth within 50 miles, hence you can use them to learn where that species goes and how fast it migrates.

The guy built these devices himself and IIRC also tagged about 30 painted buntings.

Incredibly, another friend of mine saw and photographed one of these tagged birds under a feeder during a cold front on South Padre island the following April. Gotta be at least a hundred thousand painted buntings in the world.

Mike, we have the common ones around here. I wait for their "booming" flights every year. Cool thing is they do it right over the house.

I used to do a lot of big game hunting when I lived in Washington State but here in Michigan that is much more limited. I find shooting pics of birds to be a decent and fun replacement activity. It does not fill the freezer but I still sure enjoy it.

The same sorta skill set in that ya gotta know the habitat and the season.

Anyhoo.... Most Mississippi kites pass here from Central America second half of April, but I saw a few passing over the same morning as the front earlier this week, a line of around fifteen kites all gliding north without a wingbeat nearly directly into the strong north wind and still making progress. I figure only a kite could pull that off. Here's some photos I took behind the school last years, when a northward-bound flock ran out of thermals and came down for the night in a neighborhood near the school. Flat amazing what people can scarcely notice, I think I was the only one who did.





These next two photos are lifted off of the 'net.

Here's what Mississippis look like....



But if there's anything that can make even a Mississippi look like an amateur its a swallow-tailed kite, these pass along the Gulf Coast in the spring, and once in a great while wander through the San Antonio area in late summer/early fall on their way back.



Swallow-tails are mature forest birds, snatching prey off of the foliage and branches with hardly a wingbeat. Originally found across the Deep South in summer they used to breed too up along our major river valleys and in the original tallgrass prairie regions of the Mid West.

Point of interest, the swallow-tailed kite was the "Thunderbird" of the Great Lakes Tribes at least and likely points further East. Swallow-tails could hand in the air four feet above the tall prairie grass and with an almost supernatural ability catch a thermal and ascent high into the air without a single wingbeat, they also commonly hung in the air along fronts and around storm cell, hence the association with thunderstorms. Late summer wanderers in the Colonial Era would make it clear up to Quebec and New England, likely feeding largely on migrating dragonflies.

Night before last a big storm cell maybe twenty miles west to east slowly crossed town early hours of the morning, effectively a wall dropping northbound migrants out of the sky wherever they hit it.

Next morning there was a bunch of these guys around, Blackburnian Warblers, named after the Blackburns, minor Nobility from Lancashire England who identified a specimen sent to them from the colonies in the 1740's as something new. So in the same era as the last Stuart challenge to the throne, when a couple of thousand wild and hairy Highlanders charged through Northern England, the genteel Blackburns were examining study skins, sorta like collecting stamps I would imagine.

The Blackburnian might be the prettiest warbler around, which is saying alot, mostly on account of the throat and breast of the males (all these photos lifted off the 'net).



So anyway, in the early hours of the morning on May 14th, multiple thousands of male Blackburnian Warblers were in the air over South Texas, headed north to the spruce forests of the Canadian North. Were it not for the storm stalling 'em out and grounding them, they woulda passed largely unnoticed, even by birders.

Also present in numbers and as usual one of the last species to come through, Bay-breasted Warblers.



Spruce budworm outbreaks are as natural and inevitable as forest fires in the Taiga, the moth larvae reaching superabundance and killing whole swathes of spruce trees in just a year or two. Bay-breasteds seek these areas out, and amidst this superabundant food supply can raise half again more young than regular warblers. In the off season they subsist mostly on fruit in Panama, Venzuela and Colombia.

So I'm in a local park bird watching and this fit woman on a bicycle is making circuits, got a yoga mat rolled up on the handlebars, pretty enough to merit a second look. Third circuit around she stops and asks if I was Mr. Birdwatcher and did I used to teach at the local high school. Indeed I am and I still do. Turns out she graduated twenty years ago and is now a divorced physical fitness instructor/therapist with two kids, just bought a house in the area. I didn't recognize her because she was never in my class but she remembered me, tells me how much I rocked and how her friends in my class thought I was cool, even remembered my name. Tells me I haven't changed at all ( that's prob'ly because she never saw me naked, then or now ).

We talked for about 45 minutes about birds and trees and gardens. , <"SIGH"> Pretty woman twenty years after graduation and I'm still twenty-five years older'n her, damn I'm old, more importantly, here I am finally available and to these women I'm a like a Grampa. Life is hard and then you die.....

All of that a segue to post another chestnut-sided warbler pic... one passed right by while we were talking, she was quite impressed. Back in my college days bringing a woman bird watching was a sure fire way... worked even when you weren't planning for it to work ..................... <"SIGH">



Might as well thrown in a Magnolia Warbler too, 'nother Taiga breeder coming through in good numbers.....

I took these in the Atchafalaya basin and in the marsh along the coast. Lots of teal came through our area this year. They are hard to photograph.