Life histories of North American wood warblers, Part 1 (of 2)Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American wood warblers, Part 1 (of 2)
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Passeriformes; Wood warblers
_Fall._--The myrtle warbler is one of the latest of its family to move
southward and is also one of the most leisurely in migration; the
migration covers practically the whole of September and October and much
of November, the earliest arrivals sometimes reaching the Gulf States
before the last ones have left Canada. Abundant in the spring, it is
much more so in the fall, when it can often be seen in enormous numbers.
As the birds drift along southward, many stop along the way where food
is abundant and some spend the winter at no great distance from the
southern limits of the breeding range. In Massachusetts, we usually look
for them during the latter half of September or during those golden
October days when woods are ablaze with the gorgeous autumn colors. As
we stroll along the sunny side of the woods on some bright morning after
a frosty night, the air is full of pleasing bird music. The robins, now
wild woodland birds, are twittering or uttering their wild autumn calls
as they drift through the trees; the white-throated and the song
sparrows, from the brushy thickets below, give forth their faint, sweet
notes like soft echoes of their springtime songs; and the myrtle
warblers mingle their distinctive call-notes with these other voices as
they glean for aphids on the birches. In the open grassy fields and weed
patches, too, we find many myrtle warblers associated with the scattered
flocks of juncos and field and chipping sparrows, feeding on the ground.
And later in the fall, we find them in the bayberry patches near the
seacoast, or even on the salt marshes or among the sand dunes with the
Ipswich and savanna sparrows.
Southward along the Atlantic coast the flight is heavy; Dr. Stone (1937)
says that, at Cape May, N. J., "on October 13, 1913, Julian Potter
encountered a great flight of Myrtle Warblers which he estimated at
3,000. * * * October 31, 1920, was a characteristic Myrtle Warbler day.
All day long they were present in abundance. The air seemed full of them
wherever one went. Thousands were flittering here and there in the dense
growth of rusty Indian grass (_Andropogon_), in the bayberry thickets,
in pine woods and in dune thickets."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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