Major cool front, May 10th, wind out of the North, last opportunity for a big day on the coast. Left the house at 4:30, two hours to the coast, could be there at first light.

Didn’t do it. Never fun driving my high-mileage vehicles out of town. Plus I got twenty-plus parent/guardians to try and contact by phone or email before it’s too late to tell em little Johnny or Janie ain’t been turning stuff in online. Got a month left, gotta act now while there’s still time, if you can reach em at all.

So, sitting in a gas station parking lot on the West Side waiting for daylight, gonna hit the downtown parks instead.

Not expecting much, used to be those places downtown were reliable hotspots, recent advances in radar show us city lights concentrate migrants. But them same advances tell us migrant numbers been declining by about 5% per year.

Adds up, most migration passes East of here, we are on the edge of the river, prob’ly why the numbers we get locally ain’t been nothing like what we would expect 10 years back.

we see a lot of variety here in SE VA as they come and go. goldfinches now, are the flashiest ones. bluebirds nesting on the back deck. a militant gang of Canada geese are terrorizing the mallards in front yard lately.

I saw what I thought was extremely rare last year for this locale; whitewing doves in the front yard for a few days.
Birding friend kinda said "Meh..."

Pretty sure I saw a rough-leg hawk while golfing yesterday - kind of uncommon here this time of year. They're hard to ID for sure with all their color variations, but it for sure was not a more usual red-tail.

I discovered why my hummies were unhappy with my feeders - went to refill them and found mold growing inside. Cleaned them rigorously with alcohol and then vinegar, put them back out and now the birds are happy.

In other news, I planted bird seed but no birds have sprouted yet...

White wings been on a roll for sure, I just found out that San Antonio has the largest concentration of white wings anywhere in the World, more’n two million. Anyhoo what’s holding back white wings is their feet. Basically they are a tropical species and their toes freeze off in prolonged cold.

Anything is possible, once an arctic loon got grounded in a rainstorm in a shopping mall parking lot here in San Antonio, and that was in July.

But a ferruginous hawk which sort of has a similar shape to a rough leg is far more likely where you’re at, especially this time of year.

Canadian geese are a pita at least our Catahoula is killing a few of gooselings. He hides and waits for the geese to bring the gooselings into the yard and then the party is over. Electric fence doesn't work on geese.

Right then, a summary. For me spring migration season is about a month long, second week of April through second week of May. Of course it starts maybe a month earlier and peters out two weeks later but the numbers are much lower.

#1 Target for me I got this year.... I see one every two or three years.... the Cerulean Warbler, a little guy not a whole lot bigger than a hummingbird. What makes them special is that they winter on the slopes of the cloud forests of the Northern Andes as part of mixed flocks of Tropical species following army ant swarms, only one cerulean per swarm. (bird photos lifted from the 'net}.



What ya gotta look at in the photo are the long primary wing feathers projecting halfway down the tail and the long undertail coverts imparting a streamlined shape. These are long-hop migrants. They leave the Andes direct to the highlands of Central America, fuel up, and from there its a direct flight to North America. In North America they breed in the tall canopy of old growth forests. So they need forests in South America, Central America and the US. Habitat is increasing here in recent decades as our second-growth forest mature but they are getting hammered down south.

They breed in the Mississippi Valley and northeast of there, highest densities in the Appalachians. This here's the female, which is drab for a reason....



Long wings on a bird are like a high gear on a bicycle, you can cruise fast and far but it takes a while to get up to speed. Forest birds don't generally fly fast and far, when a hawk shows they generally jet as fast as they can to the nearest cover, and have long tails so that they can twist and turn on the way there. Hence they have shorter wings, like low gears on a bicycle, that get up to top speed right way.

To compensate, cerulean warblers build a hummingbird like nest on top of a high branch that has open space beneath, they need to do this because when flushed they first plummet straight down to gain speed. I have no idea how the nests escape blue jays and squirrels, but obviously enough do.

This here is the Hudson Highlands, that's the Bear Mountain Bridge, just about 30 miles upriver from Manhattan. When I was in high school these woods were too young to support cerulean warblers, now they do. This is how I know I am getting old



So a four inch and change bird flies all the way from Ecuador to those woods, arriving in May, breeds, turns around and leaves end of June/early July. Can't blink or you'll miss 'em.

Draw a straight line from Guatemala to the Northeast US and you'll see Texas is well west of that line, we gotta have sustained east winds, north or south, to blow 'em this war west.

Always an occasion to find one, they do pass through here but are far more likely on the coast, I found a female down there this year, two males two years earlier.

I thought you meant Meskins at first.

Was seeing a Downy Woodpecker for a while, a couple weeks ago, out back here.

Interesting Mike.

Goldfinches here now, they seem to like the dandelion seeds in my messy lawn and garden. Mourning doves every once in a while, Saw a golden eagle a few miles from the house Friday, heard chickadees on our forest walk. Swallows all over the place, a few different types. Blackbirds and cowbirds come to the feeder along with the usual quail and collared doves. Kingbirds have been back for a week or so.

Speaking of which, Mike do you know if they rob nests? We have some swallows (Tree or Violet Green) using a bluebird box and the kingbirds have been hanging around it in the mornings. This morning one of the swallows was grabbed on to the box covering the opening with his back exposed Kingbirds were flitting around and sometimes landing 8'-10' away on the barbwire. Never saw that behavior last year.

We have some willets in the neighborhood. Have been hearing them sing in the mornings when out feeding chickens for the past couple of springs. They hang out behind my neighbor (1/4 mile away) and although I've seen something flying I couldn't ID them. Having seen some down by the reservoir a couple of miles away, and having a feeling it was a shorebird sound, I got on the Cornell site and sure as heck same noise. Never figured on them being out here in the sagebrush, but there's a little seasonal creek over their way.

Killdeer are here too, along with a variety of hawks and on occasion I believe I see a prairie falcon besides the regular kestrels.

Always some LBBs flying over too.

Baltimore Orioles, barn swallows, and our resident Catbird showed up here in last week, i saw a female yellow rumped warbler last week too. Saw a bald eagle harassing a red fox while driving into town last weekend, not sure if it was trying to make the fox a meal, steal it's catch, or going after a kit. We went back and took a second look and the eagle was perched in a small tree and the red fox was hunkered down laying in the grass nearby.

I seen a brood of Downys out of the nest yesterday in the park. We are right on the far edge of the Downy's range down here, its mostly the slightly larger and closely related Ladder-back around here.

Yeah, I see Ladderbacks mainly. The Downy is smallish.

Goldfinches are among the few songbirds completely adapted to a herbivorous diet. They even feed their young seeds and don't breed until later in the summer after the seed crop has matured. Cowbirds try to parasitize goldfinch nests (heck, they try to parasitize everything, a female cowbird can lay 50 eggs in the spring). Young cowbirds in a goldfinch nest invariably starve, they cannot survive on seeds, the only downside is the female cowbird generally removes an egg from every nest she hits, she needs the protein, fats and calcium to be able to lay all those eggs.



Birds are best thought of as the little feathered dinosaurs that they are, generally speaking a bird will eat anything it can fit down its tough and leathery gullet. Once I seen a purple martin fledgling, about as big as a cardinal fully grown but unable to fly, leave the nest and fall to the ground. A flock of about fifty grackles immediately lifted up off of a nearby lawn, landed all around it and commenced to peck it to death.

IIRC Kingbirds aren't known for robbing nests, but I'm sure they would if given the opportunity.

Just a few minutes ago, saw the first confirmed bird at my new feeder - a lazuli bunting. What a wonderful start!

This. I was going to say give thanks to Trump, but darn, I guess nothing is being done.

Rocky, I sure miss the Lazuli Buntings that we used to get at our feeder in the foothills of the Blue Mountains east of Walla Walla, WA.

Birdwatcher- I usually see Cerulean Warblers about 20 miles west of my home here in Michigan but I have not yet. They are typically found right near a bridge on a certain road. I might try for them this weekend.

So far this year locally I have added a few new lifers to my list including Short-eared Owl in January and this spring Ross's Goose (according to another knowledgeable birder- I would have called it a Snow Goose), yellow-headed blackbird, Barred Owl, Wilson's Phalarope and Gray-cheeked Thrush.

I have seen the usual Black-throated Green, Palm, Yellow-rumped, Blackburnian, Black-and-white warblers as well and yesterday my first of the year Scarlet Tanager.

I was stoked to get this picture of a Blue-headed Vireo last Saturday.

Thanks birdy for the finch info. Never knew all that.

The orioles have shown up, one going at the window screen yesterday after a bug.

Have seen a Lewis' woodpecker or two in the area.

Warblers? Who knows. Little dickie birds abound, flying and flitting around with gleeful abandon.

rufous, cool pic of the vireo!

Nice photo of a blue-headed vireo, we have a few all winter down here.

I got my best ever look at a grey-cheeked down on the coast last week, sometimes hard to pick 'em out amid all the Swainson's (photos from the 'net).....

Our southern and northernmost thrush; winters in the Amazon and Orinoco River Basins and breeds in brush up against Tundra.....



'Nother warbler I always look for are American Redstarts, pretty little birds, habitat generalists at both ends, still common. Pretty little birds, I seen a male and two females on the coast.

We had 'em all over New York State in summer but the most I've ever seen was up in Minnesota in June, singing and displaying males all over the place. 'Course if they eat blackflies up there, no wonder there's a lot of 'em.

Had a Baltimore Oriole show up at the hummingbird feeder this morning. Unusual for East Texas.

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.

Atchafalaya... Sir, you are located mid-stream in all this migration, I'm just over here in the shallows.

Your photos are much better than mine, in fact I only took one.

There's fair numbers of resident mallards around here, of course in ducks males outnumber females, so there's groups of hard up mallard drakes trying to do their duck rape thing on any mallard females not hidden somewhere with eggs and/or young. They look stressed.

This one guy avoided that whole rough dating scene by taking up with a plus-sized girl

We are in an interesting area for birds. Lots of birds migrate through here.

Take osprey for an example, where I spend most of my time is at a point on the Sibley map where they stay year round (To the east of me), spend the winter (to the west of me), and migrate (to the north of me)

Osprey are notorious wanderers, and they are big enough to put active transmitters on. There might be data from coastal Louisiana birds but here's some from the Chesapeake area. Some of the ospreys you see in winter might not be the same birds that were there all summer, its hard to tell.

Dunno if you are familiar with sites like this, apologies if you already are....

https://www.ospreytrax.com/html_files/Woody%202014.html

Thanks for the link. Ospreys are the ultimate fisherman. They love to eat their prey in our deer stands in the marsh. It is is a little messy at times.

Winds out of the south... good. A hour before dark right now. Line of big storms about 100 miles out approaching from the West at about 20mph. If the rain holds off long enough around here after dark to allow birds to get up into the air and moving, could be a good day tomorrow.

Hour and 45 minutes after dark, long N-,S line of storms closing rapidly from the west. Any rain at night is good for dropping some migrants, but this one ain’t gonna stall out while migrants coming up from the south can run into it in one place for a period of time like the last one.

Also, the line of storms is gonna hit along a 200 mile line running SW of here about the same time as they do here, knocking birds down before they get this far north.

Gonna be fun to watch it all roll in though from here on the porch. The dogs are definitely not amused however.

Great info thanks birdwatcher.

I’ve been doing a 5 mile challenge since the covid hit and have over 40 species so far logged. Rarest probably being greater yellow legs or kirtlands warbler

Heard a great gray last week and have been on the hunt but no dice so far.

I don’t carry a camera when I bird...just glasses but I’m run and gun type

Greater Yellowlegs are common here in our limited wetland areas from mid-July when the first southbound shorebirds come through until the following April, Kirtland's are a whole 'nother story of course.

No big effect on migrants from last nights storms, different layout and also getting late in the month. Whatever, 48 hours ago we had a fallout of Blackburnians and others due to rain, last night not many at all. I was three hours in line taking the dog to the feed store Saturday Vet for shots this morning (social distance and alla that) but I did get out for about an hour.

Lucky day, I got one of these a female Golden-winged Warbler.... (bird photos lifted from the 'net).



Didn't make out the yellow cap but the yellow wing coverts and face pattern was a giveaway, hyperactive too, characteristic of the species. Coulda been some second or third generation backcross ergo no yellow cap on account of golden-wings are steadily disappearing, being genetically swamped and displaced by the closely related blue-winged warbler....




This here is what the male golden-wing looks like....



Both inhabit early successional brush and forest edges so both benefited enormously from the clearing of the original forests, both have a generally similar buzzy song and female golden-wings especially will mate with male blue-wings but it happens the other way too. This hybridization in both directions has been going on so long that the two main hybrid types were considered species in their own right back in the days.



Same pic from earlier of the Hudson Highlands maybe thirty miles upriver from Manhattan....



Back in the seventies, golden-wings were common in that area, blue-wings have since gradually spread up from the south and then swamped and gradually replaced the local golden-wing population. Maybe fifteen years back there was a locally famous among birders singing male Lawrences hybrid type visible from a road on West Point maybe five miles from that photo, two or three years in a row. He got lucky and found mates, blue-winged females, but he was the last half-breed of a disappearing breed.

The few places golden-wings are so far holding steady are in the northern edges of their range, mostly up in Canada, but its getting to be an occasion down here to find one.

Birdwatcher, thanks for the tutorial. Friday on the way home from work I stopped at a pond and saw a Prothonotary Warbler. Yesterday was gorgeous here. I saw a Magnolia Warbler in the back yard and Blackburnian, Bay-breasted, Black-and-white, Ovenbird, Black-throated Blue, Yellow-rumped and Chestnut-sided in the development along with Catbird and Scarlet Tanager (among others). Today is cooler and rainy.

I think you are selling yourself short on the lady you met the other day. Ask her out!

I went for a walk in our development after work. There is a great birding ridge above the river. I saw Cedar Waxwing, Blackburnian Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Cape May Warbler and Chestnut-sided Warbler. I also saw a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. I had seen a Cape May before in the Dominican Republic but this was the first time in the US for sure (I think I saw one a couple days ago). Also had seen the Cuckoo before (on our property among other places) but this was the first time I was able to get a photo. It was a great outing. Then when I got home I saw a Scarlet Tanager in our back yard.

Black-throated blues and Cape Mays are a rare event in Texas, they winter East of here in the Caribbean so have little cause to pass this way.... but they're so pretty I'll post web pics of 'em anyway....

The Cape May, like the bay-breasted, is a spruce budworm specialist , following outbreaks around from year to year....



And I wish the black-throated blues came through here, I associate them with the woods in the Adirondack Mountains and Vermont...



That Blackpoll you took a photo of is a survivor of an incredible journey....



The whole population moves east in late summer to congregate on the New England Coast where IIRC they fatten up on bayberries (or myrtle? I forget). Then in September huge flocks lift off in the evenings and fly SOUTHEAST out over the Atlantic IIRC above 10,000 feet.

200 - 300 miles out they pick up prevailing high altitude southwest winds and ride them all the way to the coast of Brazil, four days in the air non-stop, one of those things you wouldn't believe if it weren't true. I believe Connecticut Warblers follow a similar path, and have a similarly streamlined look, tho there aren't nearly as many as them.

A book to read if you haven't already, "Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds." by Scott Weidensaul

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Wind-Across-Hemisphere-Migratory/dp/0865475911

A series of very well written essays about bird migration, for example, they can fly 125 miles per gram of fat, fascinating trivia like that. Weidensaul also wrote a pretty good book about the Early Frontier: Columbus through the French and Indian War called "First Contact". So he's better at birds AND history than me.

Wow. That Blackpoll migration is one of those things that make you go hmm. How the heck did they ever figure out that there was an airstream out there to take them back to Brazil? Pretty dang cool.

Trial and error apparently, involving the death of innumerable individual birds. In songbirds timing, distance and direction is all genetic, implicit in these genes is some degree of random mutation.

Every year a few migrating songbirds inherit the wrong directions, almost always ending in death. Years ago when I was in college a little painted redstart from Northern Mexico turned up at some lady’s feeder in Upstate NY, throngs of birders went to see it, until the lady’s cat ate it.

Sorta like that, in that book I recommended Weidensaul relates the case of a migratory Amazonian rail, that ordinarily migrated around the rain forest, found dead under a bird feeder on Long Island in December.

I had a friend who was a fisheries observer in the Pacific, every fall a few migratory North American songbirds, heading west instead of south, would land on the boats to rest for awhile, before heading out in a doomed attempt to cross the Pacific.

Once in a great while it works, and if this new direction results in more offspring than the old, over subsequent generations this new destination replaces the old.

Third week of May, where down here close to the Gulf Coast, which an estimated one billion songbirds cross every year in the spring, migration always closed out in a deluge of the dreaded Empidonax flycatchers; in this part of the route five species of drab flycatchers sometimes impossible to tell apart.

Here's the easiest and the commonest, easy because its the smallest, the Least Flycatcher



....and here's a bigger one, identified as a willow flycatcher but could just as easily be an alder flycatcher basically you're not really sure until it says something, vocalizations presumably being how the birds themselves tell each other apart.



Same situation as a bunch of other Neotropical migrants; still a whole vast Northwoods in which to breed up north, getting hammered by habitat destruction down south. Decades past these things would even show up in my yard mid to late May, last ten years not so much.

Anyways they pass through late because they eat flying insects, which mostly only fly when its warm out, so early birds this case would get there only to starve to death, which in a songbird can happen in 48 to 72 hours. The early bird don't always get the worm.

Right after breeding, our songbirds replace most of their feathers, a feat which is at least as metabolically demanding as breeding or migrating, since feathers are composed of protein and once the moult starts its gotta be done ASAP. Migratory songbirds have a choice, moult here after breeding or fly south right after breeding and moult down there. Empidonax flycatchers choose the latter option. So they get here late, breed as rapidly as possible, turn around and head back South, blink and you'll miss 'em.

The Eastern Wood Peewee actually isn't an Empidonax flycatcher, and easier to tell apart from 'em. It is named for its call, which "peeeeooooweeee" is the earliest predawn birdsong in the June forests, they usually call during spring migration too and are usually common as dirt but I ain't sure that I've heard or seen even a single one this year...



Kingbirds are flycatchers too, and the most widely distributed in the Eastern half of the Lower 48 and all across the Canadian Northwoods is the Eastern Kingbird. Interesting because, alone of all our flycatchers, they undergo a radical behavioral shift in the Wet Tropics and become wandering fruit eaters, gathering in enormous flocks. I'm sure they are still common as dirt somewhere, on the coast whole rivers of these things pass by early May. Ain't seen a one, there or here.





Among all these migrant flycatchers, there's gotta be one Uber; the hardest to find, the most specialized in habits, the one that flies the furthest, the one most on the way out. And indeed there is, the robin-sized Olive-sided Flycatcher.



Specializes on bees and wasps, forages almost exclusively from the tops of tall dead trees around forest openings, migrates the longest distance of any flycatcher, winters on the Eastern slopes of the Andes in Chile, Ecuador and Peru, where once again it needs bees and wasps and tall dead snags in forested areas. Besides all this the lowest reproductive rate of any North American flycatcher. its specialized niche limits even the amount of young it can raise.

Population dwindling rapidly, again habitat destruction down south. Only saving grace of finding these things on spring migration is, if one is around, its gonna be a robin-sized bird sitting on top a tall dead tree. Hadn't seen any at all this year, not sure if I did last year, but then yesterday morning early I'm walking my dogs in the Hill Country north of town, climb a steep hill and on the top there's a dead juniper tree maybe five feet tall.

Tallest dead tree around, and there was an Olive-sided Flycatcher perched on top. For me that was a "well hey, thankyou God" moment

I have seen Eastern King birds in North Dakota and here in Michigan. I've only seen a couple so far this year. We have many Eastern Wood-Pewees here. One of my favorite bird calls.

We had male indigo bunting at out feeder the the other day, it was the third time I have seen one here in the last 30 years.

Eastern kingbirds breed as far west as E. WA and NE Calif. At least from what I've seen. Pairs in both places, hanging around for the summer.

Just saw one the other day near our place here. Had a pair I saw every year in the same spot in E WA when I worked up there. Shocked me, as I had seen them along the Allegheny drainage in NW PA, but never out west until then. Had to look up their range in the bird book!

This here is a black-throated green warbler, widespread in the Northwoods and across the eastern hardwood forest, a separate population gets here a bit earlier and breeds on the North Carolina coast, but those birds winter in the Carribean.



Turns out there's an earlier window, March through May, when the climate in the Texas Hill Country resembles that further north. The steep hillsides and narrow ravines support bigtooth maple, sycamores and Ashe juniper (AKA cedar), effectively a small area eastern hardwood forest two months ahead of schedule. Over time it is presumed that Texas had its own population of some common ancestor of today's black-throated green. Over the centuries, this population was presumably reproductively isolate by timing and location and became the golden-cheeked warbler



The songs of the two species are similar, and some degree interbreeding with black-throated greens occurs, but golden-cheeked warblers do all their breeding in March and early April, and black-throateds mostly come through after that.

How many golden-cheeked warblers there were "back in the days" is debatable, most of the Hill Country was burned over prairie with just pockets of woodland habitats in the steeper-sided ravines. One limiting factor has been that female golden-cheeks will not built their nests out of anything other than strips of juniper bark, and these shreds of bark do not appear on a juniper tree until the tree is past about 50 years of age.

Not being a prairie species, golden-cheeked warblers were little affected with the passing of the prairie, in fact their habitat expanded. For the first 150 years of Anglo settlement golden-cheeked warblers came and went mostly unnoticed by ranchers. Arrived in early March, bred, headed back to the highlands of Central America beginning in early June. The woodlands in the ravines survived cattle and old Juniper trees offered shade (the warbler has no use for young junipers).

Late 20th Century the Texas Hill Country. one of the most beautiful and unique regions on earth, begins to disappear under a wave of acreage homesites, a thing continuing unabated to this very day. Out of concern for the warbler and also as a strategy to stop this development, the warbler was put on the Endangered Species list in 1990. There is very little public land in Texas, the economic burden for preserving this warbler was gonna land on private landowners and ranchers. In recognition of that, and in recognition that ranching had little or no effect on warbler populations, Texas Parks and Wildlife did nothing, they couldn't have even tried to do anything anyway without stirring up a shidtstorm.

Then came the election year of 1992, Bill Clinton was elected. 1994 his Secretary of the Interior suddenly declares TWENTY-THREE WHOLE COUNTIES of Central Texas as critical habitat for the warbler, meaning in theory a rancher couldn't even cut a tree without Federal permission. Furor erupts, people go out shotgunning for warblers, the Hill Country echoes with chainsaws as ranchers cut down every old cedar tree in sight, lest the Feds come and inventory their land. "Golden-cheeked Warbler Barbecues" are held as part of public protest rallies.

Here in Texas, 1994 was an election year, a newcomer in politics, one George W. Bush, runs against Democrat incumbent Anne Richards for Governor. This was the year of the backlash against everything Bill Clinton, including don't ask don't tell, and here in Texas George W. Bush hung the warbler issue around Ann Richards' neck.
So, the warbler played a significant role in turning Texas Red, where it narrowly remains twenty-six years later.

At the time of its listing an estimated 10,000 pairs of golden-cheeked warblers remained, maybe more than there ever was before Anglo settlement. Putting it on the Endangered Species List may have been the worst thing that ever happened to it. The beautiful Texas Hill Country is still rapidly going under, and all those cut down old cedars are still gone. I dunno that anyone knows how many warblers we got left.

Interesting foot note in History of TX Wildlife Mgt. I remember it well. Thanks for posting that Mike.

Valsdad, now that you mention it I do remember seeing an Eastern Kingbird at my place in the foothills of the Blue Mountains east of Walla Walla, WA. They do get around!

Well, on the plus side, I made quite a lot of free money every year for ten years counting the warblers for the DoD, the Military really is a good land steward. Can't believe I eventually quit it, but at the time it was taking up every weekend from March through July 4th, all time I could not spend with my wife and son.

The other bird I made a lot of free money off of became almost equally infamous in Texas; the black-capped vireo.



Actually this one HAD been hammered by the passing of the prairie, it breeds in the succession scrubby oak that hangs in there after fires and back in the prairie days was presumably found over large areas clear up to Nebraska. Studies of the few pairs remaining in the Austin area indicated that they experienced almost no nesting success, largely due to getting hammered by cowbirds, said vulnerability to cowbirds being sorta odd in a prairie species.

Nobody seems to have asked where the vireos in the Austin area were coming from if they weren't able to replace themselves, three to five years being a long life for a songbird. Out in the Kerrville Wildlife Management Area until at least recently they trapped and killed cowbirds by the hundreds and do prescribed burns and IIRC have about fifty pairs of successfully reproducing vireos. Admirable as that is, fifty pairs does not a population make.

Things started tipping the other way when in the late 80's, a college professor at A&M who I used to count red-cockaded woodpeckers and the warblers for on the side, traveled to the Burro Mts of Northern Mexico and found breeding black-capped vireos all over. Turns out that the vireo is found sparsely but regularly distributed across much of West Texas on hot, arid slopes that support scrub oak. Ironically, the reason we did not know this is that, almost all of Texas being private land, nobody who would have known was ever able to get out there and look. The Austin area birds were and are on the very eastern fringes of the vireo's range, where conditions for it are marginal and recruitment comes from the main population further west.

Ironically, a local stronghold of the black-capped vireo is on Fort Hood, an armor/artillery training base. This county-sized installation is basically shaped like a large donut with the impact zone in the middle. Everybody shoots towards the middle of the base from the edges (with the unfortunate exception of one Junior Officer one night who got his directions 180 degrees wrong and ended up dropping some howitzer rounds into some guy's acreage homesite a couple of miles off-base ). When you drive on Fort Hood its just hill country juniper scrub, hill country juniper scrub, hill country junipers scrub......

....and then suddenly you arrive at the impact zone and.... cue in Dances With Wolves..... reasonably accurate original-style Texas prairie stretches for miles

There is so much unexploded ordnance in there that when it burns they just let it, hence the fire climax grasslands and oak scrub.... and black-capped vireos

So anyways, IIRC they finally de-listed the vireo a few years back, so I dunno if Kerrville WMA still gets the funds to trap all them cowbirds. I hope so.

I was outside Pomeroy.