Our Winter Warblers

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Everyone knows warblers. They're those small, often brightly colored songbirds with thin beaks that dart around eating insects in the tops of trees and shrubs. Most of our warblers are "neotropical migrants" - they live in North America in spring and summer but migrate south in fall and spend winter in Central and South America. 

 Chestnut-sided Warbler

In Texas we see warblers mainly in the spring, when they drop in here on the way to their breeding grounds further north. On good days in April or May, birders flock to High Island and other southeast Texas sites in hopes of seeing the arrival of twenty or more species of warblers in their bright breeding plumage.

However, you also see warblers migrating through our area in the fall, even as late as November. Just yesterday I spotted a Wilson's Warbler on the CyFair campus.

If you miss fall migration, don't worry! There are three warbler species that are just now arriving in our area and that will stay here for months.
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Pine Warbler

The first and most striking of our three winter warblers is the Pine Warbler.  

Adult Male Pine Warbler
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Pine Warblers are actually year-round residents of our area, although our resident birds are joined in winter by flocks of Pine Warblers coming from further north. They are the warblers that you are most likely to see at your yard feeders, since they are the only warblers that regularly eat seeds as opposed to insects. The males are very easy to identify because they have bright yellow chests with some olive streaking.

They are even easy to ID from underneath.

Adult female Pine Warblers have less yellow, while first year females are very drab indeed.

First Year Female Pine Warbler

The other two warbler species that are present now - the Yellow-rumped Warbler and the Orange-crowned Warbler - migrate here from the north and decide that Texas is a pretty good place to spend the winter.
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Yellow-rumped Warbler

The Yellow-rumped Warbler is less easy to identify than the Pine Warbler because plumage varies considerably from bird to bird. Typically, it is a gray bird with a gray-and-white streaked breast and with yellow patches under the front of its wings. However, some birds are more brown gray and the yellow patches can be very indistinct. So the best ID mark is the one that gives this bird its name: a yellow rump. Yellow-rumped Warblers also frequently make a distinctive "chip" call.

Sometimes, though, even a quick glimpse is enough to make the ID.

Yellow-rumped Warblers typically scurry about in tree tops, darting up like flycatchers every now and then to pluck an insect out of the air. They are able to winter here because there are plenty of bugs around in southeast Texas even in at this time of year.
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Orange-crowned Warbler

The third of our winter warblers is the Orange-crowned Warbler.

Orange-crowned Warbler

This warbler is often the hardest of the three to identify because it is a drab colored bird and its orange crown is rarely visible - unless you happen to catch it bathing!

The best ID feature is the yellow under its tail.

The bird can live here at this time of year because it has been able to adapt its feeding habits. Unlike most warblers, it is an expert at foraging for insects and insect eggs among fallen leaves and in bark crevices.
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This Weekend in Our Yards

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It was a dark and wet weekend here in Cypress, and so we spent most of it at home. This gave me a chance to see which birds are currently visiting our yards. Unfortunately, though, the lack of light made it impossible to get photos of all of our bird visitors.

For the past few weeks several Blue Jays have been occupying our front yard, where they compete with squirrels to see who can collect the most acorns. At present the Jays are definitely winning.

House Sparrows, White-winged Doves, Carolina Wrens, Northern Mockingbirds and Northern Cardinals have also been much in evidence, and Carolina Chickadees (below) are rarely absent from our feeders.

A Red-bellied Woodpecker often swoops in to our peanut feeder, scaring away our loyal pair of Downy Woodpeckers (below). However, the Downys invariably reappear as soon as the larger woodpecker has left.

The Brown-headed Nuthatches which graced us with their presence for the first half of the year are nowhere to be seen, and the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that argued over our feeders last month also seem to have gone. Luckily, the past couple of weeks have seen the reappearance of one of our favorite species: Tufted Titmice. Two of these lovely little birds have been feasting on our peanuts and I never tire of watching them. I'm hoping that, unlike the nuthatches, they will become permanent residents in our yards.

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Lately at CyFair

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Although this is fall migration season, the CyFair campus has been quiet for birds. A colleague has noticed Yellow Warblers and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers but I haven't seen any migrants.

Our Great-tailed Grackles are resident birds and so they are going through molt at present. The males usually have spectacular tails.

At the moment, most of their tails - and the rest of their feathers, too - are less than spectacular.

And some tails are totally absent - which must be really humiliating.

We always have a Great Egret or two somewhere on campus. One of them has taken to doing its early morning grooming on a lamppost in a parking lot.

The birding trail boardwalk has been almost totally devoid of birds. One reason for this may be that our resident female Red-tailed Hawk has taken to perching over the trail. 

What a stunning-looking bird she is!
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Kingbirds Breeding

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Every summer I enjoy watching Western Kingbirds nesting on the CyFair campus. I normally watch the pair that nests under the eaves of the basketball court but this year I'm watching another pair. This pair nests annually in trees alongside the lot where I park my car every day.

These particular W Kingbirds have been around for several weeks and I've been keeping an eye on them to see which tree they would choose this time.

The Friday before last I saw the very first signs of nest-building. It wasn't too impressive!

However, by the following Monday morning the nest looked to be complete.

The next day the female was sitting in the nest.

The male, like all typical dads-to-be, was hovering nervously nearby.

The eggs should hatch on about June 15th. After that, it'll be fun watching the parents feed and clear up after the nestlings until early July.
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This Week at CyFair

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Now that migration is over, we've entered our quiet summer period on the CyFair campus. There are still some interesting birds around, of course. Common Nighthawks are swooping over the parking lots and at least one Green Heron is fishing the retention ponds. Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (below) are perching on lampposts, buildings and fences, although I haven't seen any on the ponds yet this year. 

On my only walk down to the nature trail, I came across a Turkey Vulture with a damaged wing. It scampered away when I approached but it clearly was not able to fly and so I don't expect it will survive very long.

As is to be expected, many birds are busy raising their young, like a Northern Mockingbird that was watching over its offspring on a parking lot gate.

Also in the parking lots I noticed what I thought was an adult Mourning Dove nuzzling up to its offspring.

As I watched, though, it soon became clear that what I was watching was an adult male with an adult female!

Nearby a Great-tailed Grackle was investigating a fast food wrapper.

The Western Kingbirds that come to the parking lots every year have been busy also. But I'll comment on them in my next post.
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Recently at CyFair

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This week has been fairly quiet for birds on the CyFair campus, except for normal residents, such as Great Egret, Northern Mockingbird, Northern Cardinal, Great-tailed Grackle, White-winged and Mourning Doves and Black-bellied Whistling Duck (below).

Early in the week I had occasional looks at Gray Catbirds, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and Baltimore Orioles, and then a female Scarlet Tanager decided to hang out for a couple of days at the entrance to the nature trail.

On the campus, as everywhere in our area, Eastern Wood-pewees have been common sights.

Except for Common Yellowthroats, warblers have been few and far between. However, a couple of Bay-breasted Warblers turned up on Tuesday. 

They were joined by a Magnolia Warbler.

While I missed getting a photo of a Blue-headed Vireo, I was luckier with this Philadelphia Vireo.

Our martin house is full of nesting Purple Martins and it seems there is never a time when the sky near the nature trail is empty of these birds.

The campus now has several Western Kingbirds, and I am waiting to see if one pair nests in the roof of the basketball court, as has happened every year since about 2004. In the meantime, I always enjoy seeing these beautiful birds at different places around the campus. 

Incidentally, we have also had a couple of interesting flyovers. On Thursday morning I spotted a Crested Caracara, a bird we see only rarely at CyFair, although the species is very common a few miles west of the college. The same afternoon I was surprised to see an Osprey flying above the northern retention pond, a fish grasped in its talons. We had an Osprey around the campus all winter but I assumed it had moved on. It will be interesting to see how long it stays. It will also be interesting to see how long Cedar Waxwings remain: The flock that once numbered over 1,000 birds is now down to a couple of dozen.
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Meanwhile, Back in Our Yards

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For the past week I've spent hardly any time in our yards. This is partly because I've been out looking for spring migrants and partly because the winter residents have now left our yards. My last sighting of Red-breasted Nuthatches was on April 24. Brown-headed Nuthatches are still visiting, which makes me think they may have become permanent residents.

When I have had time to look, I've seen only our normal residents, including the pair of Carolina Wrens that keep bringing their young to check out our feeders. American Robins, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals and Carolina Chickadees have all been regular visitors also.

As always, some of the most frequent visitors have been White-winged Doves. This one seemed to be testing the temperature of the water in our birdbath with its tail.

The temperature must have been just right because the bird proceeded to take a leisurely bath.

Every so often all of our birds disappear, when a Cooper's Hawk flies through our yards. It's presumably the same hawk that has been hanging out on our block for most of the winter.

This Weekend
As another cold front is passing through, we've decided to spent the weekend at High Island. While the odds are very low of any fallout lasting to Saturday, we're hoping that we might see a good number of migrants. If migrants don't appear, we should still have fun watching the nesting birds in the Smith Oaks rookery and making another visit to Anahuac NWR.
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