This morning, another cold and clear day just before sunrise, another birdsong woke me just as quickly and happily as the Black-and-white Warbler two days ago. This one was the very different song of a Blue-headed Vireo, a series of slow, sweet phrases, repeated over and over again. It came close and stayed nearby for several minutes, as other birds sang in the background. I listened, following the song as moved rather slowly from tree to tree around the edge of our back yard. I could only imagine its sleek, round blue-gray head with a bold white pattern like spectacles that circle the eyes. Its back is greenish, its throat and breast clean white, with a wash of yellow along the sides. It moves as it sings \u2013 deliberately, with pauses \u2013 searching the branches for insects, spiders and other small prey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This trio of early migrants here \u2013 Louisiana Waterthrush, Black-and-white Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo \u2013 usually all arrive around the same time \u2013 mid March if not earlier. As their songs join the songs of our year-round resident birds and winter birds, they are like the earliest spring flowers, welcome signs of a new season of life and color. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning, another cold and clear day just before sunrise, another birdsong woke me just as quickly and happily as the Black-and-white Warbler two days ago. This one was the very different song of a Blue-headed Vireo, a series of slow, sweet phrases, repeated over and over again. It came close and stayed nearby for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}