Blog Birding #321

Connecticut Warblers are skulky in the best of times, and a real treat to see. That evasiveness and novelty makes the news about their extraordinary fall migration all the more amazing. Emily McKinnon at Movement Ecology of Animals discovered this unexpected migration and writes about it.

I think there are a lot of reasons, actually. First of all, Connecticut Warblers, on a global scale, are not very abundant, so they are not a species commonly captured or seen by banders or birders. They nest in the southern-boreal aspen-transition habitats in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and some parts of the northern Great Lakes states like Wisconsin and Michigan, but they are not common even within their breeding range. Not many people venture out into bogs in June in Manitoba either, and I know why!

And at the Boreal Birds Blog, Jeff Wells explains what this new finding means for conservation of Connecticut Warblers and other birds who share that habitat.

There are 60% fewer Connecticut Warblers than there were in 1970, making them a prime candidate for further research.  Their range overlaps with the most heavily logged and fragmented portion of the southern Boreal Forest, a fact in common with other imperiled songbirds like Canada Warbler and Evening Grosbeak.

At Shapshot of Nature, Jennifer Kepler enjoys the fallout of birders that an insect bloom attracts, along with the birds of course.

     Birders LOVE the hatch out because it bring birds that are normally up high down to eye level as they forage just above and on rotting logs that house these colonies. So since I was working Tuesday, along with many others– and with high warbler counts… yesterday morning many birders got in a before work/late to work birding session to see if there was anything that stuck around. I ran in to so many familiar and new faces along my walk, it was just so funny to see what felt like more birders than birds in Prospect Park yesterday…

At Phys.org, Loretta Waldman breaks down a new study showing how the arrival of birds and the arrival of spring across much of the North American continent have become slightly unmoored.

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