It was hard to escape the feeling of having missed everything. We’d been out of town for most of the spring migration. I thought I’d catch the last week or so of the bird world’s great moving pageant when we got back, but then a lingering cold (not COVID) rendered me useless for days. At its peak I woke one night hacking, half blind and mostly deaf, and spent a long time on the couch wondering how much I loved the world anymore.
By the time I felt almost back to normal, I knew the avian circus had passed through the Keys and I’d missed it. This was verified by the fact that I hadn’t heard so much as a chip from a songbird in my neighborhood, hadn’t seen so much as a flit. There was nothing to do but promise myself it’d be better next year, and try to hold the wistfulness and low-grade despair at bay.
Then Kevin Christmas texted me a photo of a Connecticut warbler he’d seen. He’d had not one, but two in his neighborhood that morning. Suddenly there seemed a chance at redemption. I might not get to see the whole show, but I might get to see the showstopper at the end.
You should know, the state of Connecticut does not deserve the honor of having the Connecticut warbler named after it. The species would be more aptly named for Florida, Georgia, Kentucky or Ohio, states along their predominant migration route.
Or better yet, Minnesota or Wisconsin, where they actually breed. Canada would be the most apt, where their breeding range trenches across six provinces, but there’s already a Canada warbler whose breeding range stretches across the same six states. The species was named by Alexander Wilson, often referred to as the father of American ornithology, who first described the species to science, and who collected his first specimen, a bird that had swung wide of its normal migration routes, in the Nutmeg State in 1812.
What’s more important to know, though, is how difficult they are to see. They are a shy, receding species, prone to lurking in the shadows and the thickets of remote areas, living a life that largely doesn’t intersect with the company of humans. Adding to this is the fact that they migrate, as a species, in the narrowest slice of time.
Whereas most species’ migration numbers tend to form a standard bell curve, starting slow, building up, then dropping off over a period of 3 to 5 weeks, sometimes even longer, Connecticut warblers are a data spike. It’s as if they all take a vote and decide that today, today is the day we will get seen in Florida. Tomorrow, we will let a few people see us in Georgia. Saturday: Ohio!
They never stick around for long, and are generally seen because they have no choice but to move through the landscape to get from where they winter in South America to where they need to be to find a proper mate.
In reality, they tend to have a slightly larger window than one day. The folks at the Cape Florida Banding Station at Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne trapped, banded and released 18 Connecticut warblers – the most they’ve seen in a season – over three consecutive days.
(This week’s photo is of a bird that was caught, banded and released as part of their long-term migration study.) In short, seeing a Connecticut warbler is a hard get. Some years you’re lucky. Most years you’re not.
It was the last hour or two of daylight when I got up to Big Pine and parked. I could see Kevin a couple hundred yards down the road, staring into a tree. We walked toward each other, but it took us about 10 minutes to meet. Though migration seemed to be over in Key West, it was going off on Big Pine — five birds in every bush, eight in every tree.
And none of them was sitting still. American redstarts, Cape May warblers, black-and-white warblers, ovenbirds, common yellowthroats, black-throated blue warblers. … It wasn’t a huge diversity of species, but there were just so many birds. As it was so late in the season, about 80% were female, as those tend to return to their breeding habitats later than males.
Kevin’s day job is with the county, assessing habitats, monitoring wildlife, removing exotics, cleaning up trash and planting natives. And his neighborhood is full of lots the county has bought for environmental mitigation and to limit development in sensitive areas.
We worked our way slowly around the block, just kind of reveling in it. Birds were walking in the road, flitting from tree to tree, hawking after bugs in the open air. “It makes me feel good seeing all the birds,” Kevin said as we walked along. “It’s like, yeah, our little habitat is useful. Native plants help.”
There were so many birds I started to think it was okay if I didn’t see a Connecticut warbler. This was plenty. The next block over we saw a bird walking slowly along the dotted line in the middle of the road.
“That’s probably him,” Kevin said, though I didn’t think he meant it. “Probably is,” I said, lifting my binoculars.
It was.
There’s nothing flashy about a Connecticut warbler, but if you get a good look, they have an understated, confident beauty – a citron yellow breast, a jet gray face, a back the color of a well-lit palm frond, and a white eye ring bold enough to make you take them seriously.
The bird promptly turned and walked into the grass. But then he wandered out again, smoothly walking across the pavement, looking for bugs. We followed him from a distance for a long time.
We saw the second Connecticut warbler the block after that. But by the time that happened I felt as if I’d caught up with all that I’d missed, maybe even gotten a little bit ahead.
