Sycamore Warbler

There's a male yellow-throated warbler singing from the sycamore tree outside my office window right now. These dudes are known to wander around in mid-summer—often venturing far from their nesting territory, and I'm always happy to hear them. This also happens each summer out at our farm: the post-breeding males show up in our one big sycamore tree and proceed to explore the sycamore, then our feeders, our stone chimney, the willow tree. One August morning I had an adult male YTWA climb up the leg of my spotting scope's tripod! He seemed intent on exploring and was unfazed by the large, grinning mammal (me) standing right next to him.

When I was a teenage birder (which sounds like a movie title) I knew this species as the sycamore warbler. Around these parts (southeastern Ohio) most of our breeding yellow-throated warblers are found in sycamores along rivers and streams. Nature has it all figured out. The sycamores love being near the water and the warblers love being in the sycamores.

Marietta, Ohio, where I work at Bird Watcher's Digest, is a river town, built at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. With these two waterways and scores of other streams, creeks, and runs, we're blessed with an abundance of sycamore trees. Some folks dislike the sycamore, which is somewhat understandable. It can be a messy tree, if you worry about things like keeping your sidewalk, lawn, or car clean. Sycamores drop their flaky bark year-round. They drop branches and sticks like a furry dog sheds. They drop their sycamore seed balls and tons of pollen in the spring, and they drop their giant leaves in the fall.

The sycamore that lives outside my office window.

But I love the sycamore. The big one right outside my office window shades our building all summer long and is a bird magnet, letting me see nesting Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, Baltimore orioles, American robins, white-breasted nuthatches, and roosting common nighthawks. The bird list for the sycamore even includes things like indigo bunting, rose-breasted grosbeak, at least a dozen warbler species, and the lone merlin I've ever seen at BWD.

Yellow-throated warblers return early in the spring to our part of the world, often being our third or fourth warbler species to arrive in spring migration, just after the pine warbler, the Louisiana waterthrush, and the ovenbird. My guess is that the yellow-throated's foraging method is what allows it to come back so early—long before there's consistent warm weather and insect avalability. Watch a YTWA and you'll see that it often gleans the bark of trees, much like a nuthatch or creeper—or another tree gleaning warbler, the black-and-white.

It's often the yellow-throated's song that tips us off to their presence: Tee-yew, tee-yi, tee-yi, tee-yi, tee-yew, tee-yeet! The song cascades downward in pitch as the bird sings from the treetops, until the last note, which often rises upward, almost as if it's ending the song with a question.

And that's how I discovered today's post-breeding wanderer in the sycamore outside my office window, far from any water. He sang five times in a row. I hope he'll stay a spell, but I'm sure he's just a-ramblin' around. Nice to hear him, though, and to be reminded of this species that seems to love sycamore trees as much as I do.

That Bonk on the Window

While sitting in the photo blind, the weekend before last, I watched a red-eyed vireo chase a smaller, frightened bird across the yard that runs along the north side of the house. Red-eyed vireos in autumn seem to get a surge of hormones or adrenaline that makes them spend absurd amounts of time and energy chasing other birds.

Why do they do this? I assume it's the hormonal effects of the seasons changing. Why do the chased birds flee? If you had an olive-green hornet of a bird with a dark crown, white eyelines, a stout bill, and red eyes flying directly toward you, would you sit there on your comfy perch yawning? Or would you head for deep cover?

The next sound I heard, after a "stop-chasing-me!" squeal was a sickening thunk. And a bird fluttering to the ground beneath the large glass windows of the studio.

I summoned Julie and she, after searching the ground in the flower bed, found a male yellow-throated warbler, slightly stunned by its glancing encounter with the window.

Each fall we get a number of yellow-throated warblers on our ridge-top farm. They seem to want to see what the view is like from the top of the ridge. This vantage point certainly offers more of a view of the landscape than their sycamore-tree habitat along river bottoms and creek beds. As a young birder in the early 70s, I knew this species as the sycamore warbler.

Our bird-strike-susceptible windows have FeatherGuards on them which help to reduce the number of window strikes by a large percentage. Still there is no stopping a panicked warbler with a heat-seeking vireo on its tail. Fortunately the strike was at a severe angle, so the impact was not forceful, and the warbler was already recovering when Julie picked it up. She held it for a few minutes to make sure it was on the mend (Julie is a licensed bird rehabilitator), then placed it in our birch tree.

Birds that have hit a window always appear dazed. They gape (bill open) and blink slowly. This male yellow-throated gathered his wits slowly but methodically, so we knew he'd survive the impact. (Many birds suffer a head trauma sufficient to kill them long after the impact).

Soon our bird was perching on his own, though not yet ready to take wing. We watched him from a respectful distance, snapping a few pictures with our telephoto lenses.

Recovering birds often gape while gathering their wits.

Bill closed, a good sign.

The first movement along a branch, the normal foraging maneuver of this species.

The following day, a male yellow-throated warbler stopped by our birch tree and spent about 20 minutes preening and chipping in the open. We thought it might be our same bird, come back to visit the scene of the accident.

He was in fine form, preening and foraging along the branches like any healthy member of his species would do. He LOOKS like the same bird, but of course, we can't be sure.

Looking fully recovered (if this is the same bird).

Preening like a wild man.

Ready for his close-up.