One that got away

A frustrating bird moment. A striking call from the top of a tree near the pond -- a brief, husky warble -- suggests a 'good' bird. But before I can get my binoculars focused, it takes off, flying high and away. What was it? A Black-throated Blue Warbler? More likely, a Warbling Vireo -- a rarity only a few years back although increasingly common in recent times.

Warbling Vireo is one of the so-called neo-tropical migrants, birds that breed here or farther north but winter in the tropics. They should be coming in about now but few of them -- local breeders or travelers in transit -- have turned up so far this month. Pine Warbler has been an insistent presence all week but this is one of the few warblers that doesn't go very far south in the winter; it is only a short-distance migrant and most of its population doesn't even migrate. Birds like the American Robin, Northern Flicker and Eastern Towhee go short distances only in the winter. The only truly tropical migrants that are back in numbers so far this May are the swallows, notably Barn Swallow and the Purple Martins.

The dominant woodland birds right now are the corvids: American Crows (which are probably already nesting), Fish Crows (nasal calls have been resounding in the post few days) and, of course, the omnipresent zippy Blue Jays (one unfortunate Jay got unzipped -- or rather plucked -- by a raptor leaving behind only a pile of feathers to mark the dark deed). Has anybody seen the Hampton Bays Ravens? I'll have to go and look for them.

Eric Salzman