Thrushes finally made agrand appearance...

A light northerly wind looked very promising. I had my fingers crossed for a nice day and guess what!?! Not a shabby day, it almost doubled our best day of 28. We banded 49 new birds in addition to 3 recaptures adding up to 16 bird species captured. Ten of those species were warblers. The thrushes finally made a grand appearance- representing numbers of Swainson’s Thrush and Veery were netted.

Here is the undersides of two of the warbler species and see if you can ID them:



Note: length for the undertail coverts to the tip of the tail is different length.

Top 5 species
Swainson’s Thrush - 11
Veery - 9
Black-throated Blue Warbler - 6
Magnolia Warbler - 5
American Robin - 4

Highlights for the day were Mourning Dove, Warbling Vireo, Blackpoll Warbler, Mourning Warbler, and Connecticut Warbler.

Note the complete eye ring of the Connecticut Warbler. There is no break or split at the halfway mark as you see in the Mourning Warbler eye ring.


Hatching year (immatures) Mourning Warblers have an incomplete eye ring in both sexes.

**Connecticut Warblers have shorter tail projection past their undertail coverts and Mourning Warbler has longer tail projection beyond their undertail coverts. The Connecticut Warbler is on the right and the Mourning Warbler is on the left in the picture of the undersides of the warblers seen above.

Enjoy the little intriguing things about nature!