[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Yellow-throated Warbler: a puzzle solved



Hey, Carolinabirders.
On Sat., March 24, I heard my first Yellow-throated Warbler of the year at
Merchants Millpond State Park in Gates County. Floyd Williams, a longtime
park employee and birder, told me Yellow-throateds usually arrive there
March 20. He also answered a puzzle for me. Two years ago in April I was
kayaking downstream from the millpond in the creek below the dam, and I
heard plenty of Prothonotaries but no Yellow-throated Warblers. I noticed
the same thing in a couple of other swamp creeks where I paddled. I asked
Floyd about the seeming absence of Yellow-throated Warblers, and he said
he'd observed that Yellow-throateds seem to prefer trees where there are
openings in the canopy. The millpond has little clumps of cypresses and
tupelos dotted here and there in the water. On Sat. that is exactly where I
saw and heard the warblers -- in the millpond itself. When we paddled up the
creek that feeds the millpond, the canopy closed over our heads and we
didn't hear a single Yellow-throated Warbler. I think Floyd Williams hit the
nail on the head.

I was surpised by how wintry it still looked in Gates County. I once read
that the south side of the Albemarle Sound was the northern limit for some
species or other that I can't remember now, so I inferred that it's a bit
colder on the north side. It certainly looks it. The trees weren't out yet,
though in the Roanoke River wetlands, which we crossed en route to Merchants
Millpond, there was plenty of new green. We camped in a leafless winter
woodland next to the millpond, and the birds were the winter birds of home
-- chickadees, titmice, wrens and such. Not to complain, though -- there
were NO mosquitos, and I found only one tick wandering about on my person.

If other Carolinabirders were planning a trip to Merchants Millpond, I'd
suggest going just a little later -- early to mid-April. 
Ginger Travis
near Chapel Hill, NC