The female BT Blue I saw at Fields recently was sitting on a stick a couple
of inches from the ground.
Sheran
Bend
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Geier" <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
To: <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Tim Rodenkirk" <garbledmodwit@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2015 7:50 AM
Subject: [obol] Re: Curry mystery warbler
Hi Tim & All,
I think the idea of first-fall female Black-throated Blue Warbler is the
right call. These are really confusing birds, well worth reading up on
this time of year.
About foraging behavior, the first B-t Blue that I saw in Oregon (a
spring female so a bit easier, though very confusing to me at the time)
foraged in and under the lower branches of a poplar at the Alkali Lake
ODOT station, fluttering down nearly to ground level at times. There was
a lawn sprinkler running under the tree so that was a somewhat biased
situaiton.
However the BT Blues that I've seen since then in northern Virginia were
foraging almost entirely in the understory of hardwood forests, mainly
2-4 ft off the ground and just occasionally flying up into taller
saplings in the understory/subcanopy, whatever it's called.
One in an unmanaged patch of scrubland adjacent to E.E. Wilson Wildlife
Area on October 8, 2011 just about fits the date of your sighting, and
was also a first-fall female. Luckily for me, that was just a few months
after seeing this species in northern Virginia, so once I got past that
initial "vire...ulp" reaction that Alan described, I was able to figure
it out fairly quickly, just the apparent absence of the white patch in
the wing was puzzling.
That one was mid-height in a tree thicket -- my notes in birdnotes.net
say "15-20 ft" but that seems like an overestimate as I think back on
the situation, probably it was more like 10-12 ft. It was a very
sluggish bird, moving very slowly as it gleaned insects.
If everybody reading this "digs out the old warbler book" like you said,
and studies up on this confusing plumage, I bet we'd find a few more
Black-throated Blues in western Oregon.
Happy migration,
Joel
On Wed, 2015-10-07 Tim Rodenkirk wrote:
> That leaves me with first fall female BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER.
The first fall female is all drab yellow below (including the
undertail coverts), has the grayish-olive color above, no wing bar
(not sure if it is sometimes or all the time), and a prominent
supercilium. What bothered me most about the bird in question was its
feeding behavior. I have seen several BT Blues in Oregon and they
have all been higher up in the canopy- at least head height and
higher. However, I looked at the older warbler book and read that
they normally nest within three feet of the ground and forage low- all
news to me. Perhaps the feeding I saw low wasn't all that unusual for
Black-throated Blues?
>
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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