Here in Minnesota we are right in the heart of songbird migration.
Baltimore orioles showed up right on time and found the grape jelly.
A day later, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak appeared on the sunflower feeder.
And rounding out the Fun Trio are the hummingbirds with their buzzy welcomes and aerobatic displays.
All sorts of new species are showing up every day.
One of the earliest warblers to arrive, the Black-and-white has a distinctive foraging style of traveling up and down tree trunks and branches.
Yellow-rumped Warblers like to catch insects on the wing fluttering much like a flycatcher.
The Chestnut-sided Warbler is named for a brown streak on its sides.
A pair of Northern Yellow Warblers picking up insects in an Elm tree.
And then there is the excitement of seeing one of the striking warblers. The only North American warbler with an orange throat is the male Blackburnian. This beautiful bird nests in wooded habitats in North America and winters in South America in open forests including shaded coffee plantations.
Many of these birds I see and photograph are feeding in Elm trees which I wrote about in this post:
The American Elm as a specimen tree is so diminished now due to the decades-long problem of Dutch Elm Disease (DED). From the 1960’s on, when the disease was first introduced in Minnesota, the devastating loss of these stately, grand trees has scarred many people who grew up enjoying them in their neighb…
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