[Birdnet] Magnolia Warbler; American Redstart; Possible Canada Warbler (heard only)

Colby Neuman colby.neuman at gmail.com
Sun May 31 18:42:44 MDT 2009


Hi all,
A male MAGNOLIA WARBLER (photos obtained) was at the housing area at Fish
Springs NWR (Juab County) this morning...and it even sang softly a few
times.  Awesome!  A male INDIGO BUNTING (singing also), a WHITE-WINGED DOVE
(present yesterday, too), three MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRDS (very odd given the time
of year) and two GREAT-TAILED GRACKLES were additional highlights this
morning.

Also, a second year male AMERICAN REDSTART was singing at Rabbit Springs
(Box Elder County - near Lucin) yesterday.

And finally...

My dad and I were in a rush to get home this morning, but we stopped in
Callao (well just in front of the couple properties on the far west end of
town - with the largest trees) and listened briefly.  After a minute or two,
a sweet sounding warbler type song came from the undergrowth that borders
the west property (it's on the north side of the road).  The song was quite
variable within the song (in terms of pitch), but was extremely
musical...lasting about two seconds each time.  The bird lurked in the
undergrowth for several minutes singing every minute or so...I hoped it
would pop into view on it's own, but it did not.  Eventually, I decided that
we just needed to get out of the car and find the bird at which point the
bird stopped singing and could not be located in the dense undergrowth...but
there are multiple hedgerows on the property.  I commented to my dad that
right before the end of the song, as well as the last note reminded me of a
Common Yellowthroat song (similar pitch as part of their 'whit-chiti')...not
the whole song overall, but mixed in at the end of the song.  I'm so bad
when it comes to music, that I'm not sure I can describe too much else about
the song especially since it only sang three times (admittedly only 20 ft
away).  And while it was singing, I was going through about every warbler
and their songs in my brain trying to figure out what it could be.  From
what I could remember from NY, I thought Hooded Warbler (my original guess),
Kentucky (in retrospect not so much when it comes to their song) and Canada
Warbler have songs and/or habits that roughly fit this bird, but we had no
CD's with us to check immediately.  So I just googled their songs when I got
home, and the bird singing was definitely NOT a Kentucky Warbler or a Hooded
Warbler (what I originally guessed it was based off of likelihood).
 However, I'll be honest in that the bird singing had a song that sounded
very similar to a CANADA WARBLER.  Wow, I wish we had spent more time
finding this bird or that I had just put my camera on video mode to see if I
could have recorded the song...I guess I just thought we'd be able to pish
it out or it would sing more or pop out into view...OOPS!

Here's the song I found online that seems to fit reasonably well...at least
well in retrospect...whatever that means.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Warbler/sounds

I would be willing to chase it (I am car-less though) in the morning (to
hopefully confirm it) if anyone would be willing to make sure we leave
Callao by 8:30-9AM so that I can get back to SLC to catch a flight
midday...which means a departure time of around 3AM would be logical (or
completely insane depending on your view).

Until a hopefully longer and more thorough west desert trip in the fall,

Colby
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://secureserver.securesites.net/pipermail/birdnet/attachments/20090531/17497758/attachment.htm


More information about the Birdnet mailing list