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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

New Migrants here in NH

Things are popping, migrants arriving, oh so fun!!! Each day we can't wait to find out what new bird we'll see here. No sooner had I alerted other people to be on the look-out for Broad-winged Hawks, when two days ago, a Broad-winged Hawk flew right over our heads while we were walking the Corgis in our big field. The Broad-winged was flapping a lot, and looked very different than the soaring Broad-wings one sees on fall migration. Spring migrants are in a hurry to get to their breeding grounds, hoping to arrive and claim a nesting territory before rivals show up.

Our first Yellow-rumped Warblers, came through yesterday, we saw 5. The males looked so beautiful in their bright spring plumage. We were first alerted to their presence by their song, a rather weak musical trill. Get to know that, because you're going to see a lot of Yellow-rumped Warblers this spring, they're such a common migrant. Look for that yellow patch on their sides, on both male and female, as you don't always see their yellow rump. To learn warbler songs, get our popular Stokes Field Guide To Bird Songs CDs (comes in eastern and western editions.) Play then in your car, or on your ipod, and listen to the warbler songs. We often do this as a way of tuning up our ears each spring.

We also saw 2 Pine Warbler males, singing, of all things, in pine trees! If you hear a musical trill on one pitch coming from the top of a pine, look up, it could be a Pine Warbler. These beautiful birds breed on our property, as we have many pine trees. If you want to learn warblers, see our Stokes Field Guide To Warblers book, in which we cover identifying all North American Warblers with beautiful full color photos. We invented a special color tab system making it possible to ID any warbler easily, really! Click here for the link to amazon. By the way, if you go to the amazon.com link, you can see inside pages of the book!

2 comments:

Kevin said...

The sure sign of spring in our yard in central NY is the perpetual singing of Black-throated Green Warblers; I expect to hear it any day now. They nest on our property, as do Ovenbirds and Yellow-rumps.

Kim said...

Lucky you getting the Broad-winged Hawk. Also want to let you know I ordered your Warbler book and love it. It will be a "must have" for me in my day this spring. Thanks