{"id":2451,"date":"2023-04-28T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=2451"},"modified":"2023-08-29T17:00:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T22:00:59","slug":"cape-may-warbler-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=2451","title":{"rendered":"Cape May Warbler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After two dark, cool, rainy days, by noon today the clouds were breaking apart, leaving blue sky and a bright, warm sun. In the trees around our back yard, a Red-eyed Vireo sang very clearly and close, weaving its way through the treetops. A Wood Thrush sang from much further away, down the wooded hill toward a creek. A Great Crested Flycatcher called deep&nbsp;<em>Breets<\/em>. An Eastern Phoebe, Easter Bluebird, Northern Cardinal, and Yellow-throated Vireo sang in the trees nearby. A Downy Woodpecker called its silvery whinny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yellow-rumped Warblers also were singing in the nearby trees, their pretty, softly chanting notes sounding as if the leaves themselves have begun to sing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then I heard a different song, almost like an echo of the Yellow-rumped Warblers but much more quiet and softer. A string of notes on mostly one pitch, high and almost whispery. I had no idea what it was, but when I used the Merlin app, it quickly identified Cape May Warbler. Wow. A male Cape May Warbler is a small, very colorful neotropical bird. A chestnut patch on the cheek and a yellow collar create a distinctive face, and its breast is yellow, streaked with black in a tiger-like way. It might be passing through here in spring migration, on its way from a winter home in the Caribbean to its summer, breeding home in forests of the far north. Though they are fairly common migrants in the eastern U.S., I haven\u2019t seen them often. It would be a wonderful bird to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I searched the leaves of the trees from which the songs were coming. It sounded as if there were at least two or three birds somewhere very close, in a particular white oak tree or other trees beside it. In fact, the songs&nbsp;<em>seemed<\/em>&nbsp;to come from the oak leaves right in front of me. And yet \u2013 I couldn\u2019t see any sign of a bird. They stayed hidden among the leaves.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I watched and listened for several minutes, at first determined to stay until I\u2019d found them. But then I stopped hearing the songs, and it seemed they had drifted away. Frustration \u2013 but at the same time, it was a delight just to have heard the songs and to know Cape May Warblers are here in our trees for this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After two dark, cool, rainy days, by noon today the clouds were breaking apart, leaving blue sky and a bright, warm sun. In the trees around our back yard, a Red-eyed Vireo sang very clearly and close, weaving its way through the treetops. A Wood Thrush sang from much further away, down the wooded hill [&hellip;]<\/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\/2451"}],"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=2451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2452,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions\/2452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}