tail end of migration?

I could swear that I heard a Black-throated Green Warbler yesterday morning. Singing. Just once but in the classic Black-throated Green pattern of high and low buzzes. It's late in the season but not impossible for a late migrant to be coming through. Yellow Warbler and Common Yellowthroat continue around the upper marsh edges and Red-Vireo continues to grace us with its presence and its Q-&-A song ("Who's there?" "I'm up here." "Who are you?" "I'm a bird." Etc.). It sings all morning and then quiets down around noon. Same with Pine Warbler.

Great Crested Flycatcher finally showed up in full voice this afternoon. I thought I had heard it once or twice earlier in the season but this afternoon's performance was definitive. This is a big, handsome flycatcher with a slightly raspy (and unmistakeable) call. It is actually an outlier of the big and confusing tribe of Myiarchus flycatcher -- a northern relative of a tropical bunch of birds.

Two smallish loons flew over -- Red-throated Loons, I'm sure (they breed in the far north and are classic late migrants). The belching Green Herons -- they really do belch -- having been moving around a lot and calling. Lorna found what looks like a nest-in-progress in an oak tree very near the house. My guess is that they will end up in the area but maybe not that close.

Unless they are nesting in the area, we usually hear Screech Owls much later in the season: August or even September. There was one calling night before last -- somewhat distant but unmistakeable.

Eric Salzman