Yellow-throated Warbler
After the Ovenbird flew, I walked on up our driveway on this beautiful, cool, sunny morning, and stopped to check out several small birds in the grass – six little Chipping Sparrows looking bright with their rusty caps. When they’re foraging close to the ground like this they could so easily be overlooked. I haven’t seen a Chipping Sparrow in a while now, so it was fun to watch them for a few minutes. Blue Jays cried, Cardinals peeped, a Carolina Wren sang, and an Eastern Wood-Pewee whistled its sweet song from a tree not far away. Some Brown-headed Nuthatches chattered, a White-breasted Nuthatch called its nasal call, and American Crows cawed in the distance. A Pine Warbler trilled its song from a wooded spot across the road.
Then for several minutes I walked down the road without hearing or seeing many birds at all, until a flash of yellow on the edge of a tangled thicket caught my attention. It was a female Scarlet Tanager, pausing in full, clear view for only a moment or two. Pale, pretty yellow all over except for darker wings and tail, she briefly looked diaphanous in the early morning sunlight – before slipping back into the vegetation and out of sight.
Walking on, I passed the smack and tee-urr calls of Brown Thrashers, the rattles of Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Downy Woodpeckers, and a Northern Mockingbird singing a full, glorious song in an open, sunny spot. In the shade of one wooded yard, a large, shadowy form flew up to a low branch of a pecan tree where it sat quietly, looking down and around – a Red-shouldered Hawk with reddish breast and black and white banded tail.
A little further on, I stopped for a few minutes to watch a small gray flycatcher hunting from low branches of an oak – an Eastern Wood-Pewee. It sat still and erect and quiet on first one branch and then another as it flew off several times to capture flying insects, again and again. At times it sat with its back to me, so that I could see its small shape, erect posture and the white wingbars folded over the back, and its rather long tail. At other times it sat facing me, even closer, so I could see its neat gray crested head, a dusky breast and even a flash of orange now and then from its lower bill. What I always think when watching an Eastern Wood-Pewee is how neat and compact it appears, both when sitting still on a branch and when it’s in flight. It looks crisp and efficient – while its lovely, ethereal song sounds almost completely the opposite, a dreamy, summery, whistled pee-a-wee . . . whee-oooh. I had already heard a Wood-Pewee singing earlier in the morning, but this one never sang while I watched.
In a line of water oaks along the top of a grassy slope, small birds were darting in and out of the faded, crusty green foliage. Among them was one that sparked bright yellow – so they looked like they might be migrating warblers. They were all high in the trees, moving quickly from one spot to another and staying mostly screened among the leaves. For several minutes I stood looking almost straight up, trying to follow one or another of the tiny creatures flitting quickly, weaving their way through the treetops. Finally I was able to see just one clearly – a Yellow-throated Warbler, one of the most colorful neotropical migrants we might find here. It’s a small, slender bird with a burning yellow throat and contrasting black streaks on the sides, and a black-and-white striped face, white eyebrow, black cheek. But especially that deep-yellow throat. Spectacular!