Last week I finally reached ten warblers for the year. Eight of the species were sighted in the Phoenix area over the last month. Two of them were while on a winter cruise stopping in Cozumel. And then this past weekend, while on another much closer trip, I achieved number eleven with a yellow warbler encounter.
I was in Prescott, almost a hundred miles away, for the first time since last September. Near my cabin is a community that maintains a couple of ponds alongside Willow Creek. The stream was still flowing steady with runoff from our wet winter. The immediate landscape is dense with deciduous trees, including towering cottonwoods. Many were budding, starting to show off their seasonal bursts of foliage.
Loud calls rang from the treetops. In fact, the repetitive tunes were familiar ones that I recognized as those of a yellow warbler's. Their strength is quite out of proportion with their source's diminutive size. However the bird's - especially the male's - bright yellow plumage is easy to spot from a far distance.
These warblers are long-distance migrants, flying from wintering grounds as far away as South America. They'll breed in Arizona in the coming months, feasting on tiny insects that dwell in the area's trees.
I wonder just how many warblers I can technically find in Arizona. Discounting the two out-of-state discoveries, the number is now up to nine. In years past I've also encountered the black and white, the hermit, the MacGillivray's, and the red-faced, all species I've not yet seen this year. As a result, if my warbler trail doesn't go dry, I might hope for thirteen, a baker's dozen. For more, I'll have to venture east and south to visit a much wider range of the Americas, like so many warblers do.
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| Male yellow warbler in Prescott. |
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| Male yellow warbler in Prescott. |
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