Weekly Report - 2017-05-12 - Warbler Nation!

Birders in the northeastern United States wait all year for this month! The month of May is the most active time of the year for migrating warblers in our area, and the last week proved to truly be warbler nation on the Nature Trail! This past week, we observed TEN species of warbler on the trail including the following:

Common Yellowthroat

Ovenbird

Yellow Warber

Black-throated Blue Warber

Blackpoll Warbler

Black-and-white Warbler

Northern Parula

Yellow-rumped Warbler

American Redstart

Cerulean Warbler - A property first!!!!

That's right, Cerulean Warbler was a property first! This brings our species total for the trail up, but it turns out I had an oversight in my record keeping. Turns out my observation of Broad-winged Hawk on the trail on 4/28 was a property first (I can't believe we hadn't recorded a Broad-winged Hawk for the trail prior to this) so that was species 117. Cerulean Warbler is species 118 for the trail! I was not able to get a photograph of this bird, but I was able to capture an audio recording of it. This is actually the second time I've ever observed this species in Pennsylvania!

Also notable on the trail this week were two Swainson's Thrush reported by J. McConnell on 5/4. We have only had a few records of this species on the property so this is a great find!

Finally, another Garnet Valley related note of a nesting Killdeer at Garnet Valley Middle School. This bird has been sitting on eggs for a few days now, and hopefully it will hatch both of them in the near future. I went to check the bird out the other day to make sure it was doing well as it's hanging out in a heavily trafficked area. As I approached, it did its usual defense mechanism where the bird pretends it has a broken wing and hobbles away from the nest. In doing this, the bird lures a potential threat away from it's ground nest by pretending it's hurt, and when it's far enough away, the bird flies off! Pretty smart, huh?