We’re winding up the year sharing the most popular — and we hope most compelling — Flying Lesson stories from 2020. Most of the posts are profiles of bird encounters, including this story of a Prothonotary Warbler we crossed paths with for a visit we still treasure. We’re posting one of the highlight pieces each Sunday this month.
All warblers are wonderful to watch, particularly males in the spring. Nature gives them fresh feathers, all the better to snare a mate. For some warblers, spring markings and colors intensify to the point that they look nothing like their normal selves.
My favorite is the Prothonotary Warbler.
Of the 37 species in the Eastern U.S., the male Prothonotary is the only one that glows. His head is a saturated yellow-orange, earning him the nickname “Golden Swamp Warbler.”
Finding a Prothonotary feels like finding that last, hopelessly hidden Easter egg. You have to see it to fully appreciate it, and every time, he takes my breath away.
Yesterday we got lucky. A male in its full spring splendor shot out from under the bridge where Anders and I were standing and headed straight for a bush not 10 feet away and directly in front of us. In the past four years, we’ve seen this bird four times in four states without the lengthy encounter that this little bird gave us.
The visit was a photographer’s delight – perfect late afternoon light and a bird so hungry he foraged out in the open for a good 15 minutes.
A fascinating new book by Jennifer Ackerman, The Bird Way, A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think, says birds have a rich social life. She says the language of birds can be complicated, emotional, and has its own syntax. This book suggests that birds will even lie at times, implying a level of sophistication far beyond what we always thought.
Birdsongs are primarily about mating and defending territory, but exchanges like this one that seem more like household conversations are part of the repertoire as well. The Cornell Lab’s Handbook of Bird Biology, the bible of bird life, says bird pairs of all kinds are constantly seen singing duets, chatting back and forth and sometimes simply working on their relationships by staying in close touch.
Robert Rice, a veteran bird scientist who spent his career with the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center, explained what happens: “They can eat so much fruit, it ferments in their gut and they go wobbly for a while,” Rice said.
It’s a magnificent sight, one I assumed I’d miss this year with our limited mobility. But the other day, wandering through the trees not 50 feet from our home, I noticed what looked like a new arrival. It was the first of a flock of Cedar Waxwings that gradually became an avalanche, all collecting insects as if their lives depended on it.
As birders all know, the more people get interested in birds, the more likely they are to want our state and federal government agencies to protect them.
First it zigged and zagged along the edge of the shore, lunging for prospects as it followed its own obstacle course though the water. Then, apparently unhappy with the results, it lifted off and headed to a new spot. That’s when the heron spotted something near the surface of the water.
Most of the answers are guesses, since the bird wasn’t tagged and certainly isn’t talking. But Andrew Farnsworth, a research associate with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who specializes in migration, said the likely drivers are genetic migration instincts that go off track, lack of food back home and changing weather patterns that are becoming more frequent around the globe.
