OK, Yeah, There’s Still A Bird Post-

It’s Saturday, after all.

Nashville Warbler

Leiothlypis ruficapilla

Also Known As

Chipe Cabeza Gris (Spanish)

The Nashville Warbler is a lively songbird with elegant, understated plumage and a special fondness for sunny forests, brushy undergrowth, and juicy caterpillars. It is also one of several birds in the Western Hemisphere with a rather misleading name. This bird is only in the southeastern United States for a few weeks during migration on its way between the northern forests where it breeds and its wintering grounds in Mexico, Central America, and the California coast. The species was first documented in Tennessee, and the “Nashville” name stuck, although it only stops over in the area during migration.

The Latin name is also rather misleading to anyone watching this bird in the field — the species epithet ruficapilla refers to a small patch of reddish feathers on the bird’s crown, usually invisible among the gray feathers of the rest of the head. Like the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Yellow-rumped Warbler (scientific species name coronata, for the rarely seen yellow crown), this name may be mystifying to beginning birders, but it might also provide an avenue into the secret social life of the bird.

The ability to hide and reveal this bright, contrasting color patch allows these birds to produce a striking visual signal, which they use to communicate agitation and excitement, particularly in aggressive interactions between males at close range. The closely related Lucy’s and Virginia’s Warblers also have hidden reddish crowns, apparently used in similar contexts. In fact, colorful hidden crown patches have also evolved in distantly related species, like the Western Kingbird, suggesting they may play important roles in these birds’ lives. However, birds are rarely seen actually raising their crowns, and our understanding of their social use is only rudimentary.

Nashville Warblers are quite social. Once the young of the year are independent from their parents, these warblers begin to form large foraging flocks, numbering up to 100 birds. On their nonbreeding grounds, these birds are often at the center of equally large flocks with dozens of species, their persistent contact calls allowing other birds — and birders — to locate them in the forest canopy. In fact, Nashville Warblers may be a “nuclear species,” facilitating the formation of these large and diverse flocks with help from another energetic northern migrant, the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Typically, nuclear species are resident birds, not migrants. But when this warbler-gnatcatcher pair comes to town, they bring the party. (snip-MORE)

(Well, it Is Scottie’s Playtime, after all … )

Fun & Music!

Gotta give the heart and mind a break!

Some Tuesday Fun

https://www.gocomics.com/lards-world-peace-tips

All these creators are indeed blessed!

(I did not verify this one; I simply enjoyed the jam.)

It’s That Saturday Bird Post-

Red-naped Sapsucker

Sphyrapicus nuchalis

Néʼézhiin (Diné / Navajo)

Also Known As

Chupasavia Nuquirroja (Spanish)
Carpintero Nuca Roja (Spanish)

About

The Red-naped Sapsucker is one of four species in the genus Sphyrapicus, the sapsuckers, which are a distinctive group of North American woodpeckers with a peculiar and unique foraging strategy. The sapsuckers are accurately named in that they do, in fact, drink sap, but not by sucking. Rather, these industrious birds create rows of small openings in the bark of specific trees to allow the sweet, nutritious sap to flow, much like a syrup maker tapping a maple tree. They then drink the sap directly from these wells, lapping it up with their specialized feathery tongues. Sapsuckers maintain these openings or “wells” throughout the breeding season, regularly expanding existing holes and opening new ones to take advantage of changes in sugar flow through the season. Their sign on trees is conspicuous: Neat grids of shallow holes that create rings around the trunks of thin-barked trees such as aspen, willow, alder, birch, lodgepole pine, and young Douglas-fir.

In creating these wells, Red-naped Sapsuckers also open an irresistible opportunity for other animals with a taste for sweets. Many birds, especially warblers and hummingbirds, are drawn to sapsucker wells. Researchers have also reported a range of mammals visiting wells, including chipmunks, squirrels, mice, deer, and even bears. Insects feed at these wells too, especially butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, and ants. In turn, the insect activity can attract additional birds that prey on insects, such as flycatchers. (snip-MORE)

Your Weekly Birds: The Songs, The Cuteness … And A Bonus!

Mourning Warbler

Geothlypis philadelphia

Also Known As

Reinita Enlutada (Spanish)
Chipe Llorón (Spanish)

About

Though relatively common over much of its range, the Mourning Warbler is secretive and notoriously hard to observe. These birds mostly stay close to the ground in dense thickets and brush where they forage and nest. Outside of the breeding season, Mourning Warblers are also fairly quiet and can easily go unnoticed. As a result, very little is known of this bird’s life history outside of the breeding season. In fact, there are sizable gaps in our understanding of its breeding biology as well — for instance, no researchers have documented the courtship behavior of this species.

However, one thing we do know is that these birds are fairly particular about their habitat requirements. Mourning Warblers are reliant on thick, brushy second-growth forest, the result of big ecological disturbances, such as fire or major storms, that kill numerous trees and open up gaps in the canopy. Following such a disturbance, habitat becomes acceptable after about two or three years. After another seven or eight years, the forest will have grown back enough that Mourning Warblers will no longer use it. This means that breeding areas for this species are constantly shifting, as one forest regrows and a new opening is (hopefully) created elsewhere. Sometimes referred to as a “fugitive species,” Mourning Warbler populations are frequently “on the run,” fleeing the regenerating forest and searching for another suitable opening.

Fortunately, these birds are not terribly picky about exactly what kind of disturbance creates this ideal habitat. Drought, disease, insect outbreaks, and especially fire are natural disturbances that this species probably relied on historically. In the current day, large forest fires are far less common, but for the Mourning Warblers, human activities seem to work just as well. These birds are commonly found in old clearcuts, abandoned agricultural areas, along logging roads, and even mining and oil well sites. While these heavily disturbed areas do not benefit most species, the Mourning Warbler makes it work. (snip-see MORE here)

Art & A Mental Health Moment Or 2 With Jenny Lawson

There is still whimsy and warmness in the world and you deserve it.

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

Hello, friend!

I am two days late on sending this because I was stuck in a depression and it ate all of my extra energy. I started and stopped several drawings because I’m not sure if I didn’t like them or if I just didn’t like me very much. My dr recommended sun and exercise and other things that sound very easy when you are not depressed and it reminded me of a poem my mom read to me so often I’d almost memorized it. (All of A.A. Milne’s poems are the songs of my childhood.) If you hate poetry, skip this part.

The poem always made me feel both cozy and sad at the same time, which was a confusing thing for a small child but also a combination that my brain would grow to specialize in.

It reminded me that recently I’d read that tiny harvest mice have been found asleep in flower beds and so I decided to draw that:

“Sometimes harvest mice will crawl into flowers to feast on the pollen and stamens and will fall asleep inside.”

The drawing is simple and plain and fairly unimpressive, but it made me feel warm inside my heart and that is a very special sort of magic.

This is all a very long way of saying that whimsy and comfort and coziness and nostalgia and joy are all worth more than we give them credit for…whether in drawing mice or reading poems from childhood or eating nectar and drunkenly falling asleep inside flowers.

Go find comfort, my friend.

I promise that you deserve it.

Hugs,

2 Cornell Bird Lab Cams

Enjoy!

These birds dance:

The “Tip-up Warbler”

Palm Warbler

Setophaga palmarum

Also Known As

Wagtail Warbler
Tip-up Warbler
Bijirita común (Spanish)
Reinita coronicastaña (Spanish)

About

The Palm Warbler is unusual among the Western Hemisphere’s wood-warbler family. While the majority of warblers are sexually dimorphic, with males noticeably brighter in the breeding season, the male and female Palm Warbler are nearly identical, and can be impossible to tell apart. Warblers, in general, spend a majority of their time in trees and shrubs, but the Palm Warbler is quite comfortable on the ground. Rather than hopping like their arboreal relatives, these birds take to walking or running. Like other warblers, the Palm Warbler often joins mixed-species flocks outside of the breeding season. However, though most warblers tend to flock up with other arboreal species, the Palm Warbler is just as likely to be found foraging with sparrows along hedgerows and in open weedy fields.

Palm Warblers share another habit more typical of ground-dwelling birds in that they continuously bob their tails. This behavior is also seen in other birds typical of open habitats, including the Spotted Sandpiper and Black Phoebe, where the rate of bobbing is thought to vary with the bird’s level of excitement, and thus plays a role in communication. In many ways, the Palm Warbler behaves more like a sparrow or pipit than a typical wood-warbler — even its monotonous trilled song is remarkably similar to that of a Dark-eyed Junco or Chipping Sparrow. Though perhaps an oddball among its own family, this unique bird has found a niche all its own, somewhere between a sparrow and a warbler. (snip-MORE)