Warblers in My Prescott Yard

All it took was a glance from the deck into my Prescott yard to beckon me back to the warbler trail.  Looking up from my lunch toward a scraggly alligator juniper that's more of a bush than a tree, I spotted a peripatetic bird with a bright yellow head.  If I were in Phoenix, I'd have supposed it was a verdin, but among the pines at over a mile high I surmised it was a male hermit warbler.  And just like that, I was back to chasing warblers, reaching a new count of eleven individual species for the year.  

The next day at close to the same time I witnessed another warbler, darting from branch to branch in the oak trees of my front yard.  I saw distinct black stripes which made me think it was a black and white warbler, an uncommon migratory bird to the area.  Circling my yard, I only captured a picture of a Bewick's wren high in a ponderosa pine tree.  I simply couldn't be as sure with this second warbler. 

A couple of days later, I hit the forest trails surrounding my neighborhood in search of warblers, thoroughly determined to photograph them.   Seven miles and two hours later, alas, I didn't encounter a single specimen, only snapping a shot of a warbling vireo.  I enjoyed the irony that I captured that specifically-named species and one in a family of birds that reminds me a lot of warblers. 

Back at my cabin in time for my usual early lunch on my deck, I noticed black and white stripes on a warbler flitting across my front yard.  After I retrieved my camera from inside the cabin, twenty birds were annoyingly crowded across the landscape in my narrow field of vision.  They included a noisy flock of bushtits and several mountain chickadees.  Since the chickadees have bold black and white stripes across their heads, was I mistaking these birds for warblers?  No, even in the commotion, I could discern two birds with stripes across their torsos.  Definitely warblers and I had the pictures to prove it!

That meant I was up to twelve warblers for the season and that I only needed two more, the red-faced and MacGillivray's, to make it fourteen: the maximum I could probably see in the state.  However, when I finally transferred the photo to my computer, I was disappointed to discover it wasn't a black and white warbler at all.  Instead, it was a black-throated gray warbler, which I had already seen in Phoenix during spring migration. 

So is it time to hit the warbler trail again?  No way.  I'm having too much luck on my Prescott deck to miss sitting around and waiting for the birds to arrive.  

Black-throated gray warbler in my Prescott yard.

Warbling vireo near my Prescott neighborhood.

Mountain chickadee in my Prescott yard.