BLACKPOLL WARBLER WORTH HOURS SPENT BACKYARD BIRD-WATCHING

MALE BLACKPOLL WARBLER -PHOTO COURTESY SHARON MILLIGAN

This photo was taken last week (2016) on Dauphin Island.  Quite a few blackpoll
sightings have been made this spring, so do keep a watch out. Our group was struck by
the brightly colored (yellow) feet - present in both sexes.

One of the best reasons for continuing the backyard bird-watch well into May is the Blackpoll Warbler, a rather slow-moving gleaner, the male of which, while sporting the same colors as the Black and White Warbler, is easily distinguished by its black crown and white cheeks. A handsome fellow – somewhat understated.

The female blackpoll is even less distinctive, but she can be identified with attention to a field guide, and by the company she keeps. She has no need for beauty as we perceive it, for her duties include the incubation of eggs and the brooding of young, and the more inconspicuously she tends to those responsibilities, the more successful a mother she will be.

Just when the excitement of spring migration appears to be running out of steam, the search for blackpolls (and a few other late starters) can hold interest for a while longer. To my dismay, I have yet to see my (this written in 1987) spring blackpoll, although others have had the pleasure. My search is being intensified, and my anxiety grows.

The blackpoll is an abundant warbler over its breeding range, but it occurs here only as a transient, and there are some springs when very few are seen – it takes a low pressure system over the Gulf to precipitate blackpolls in appreciable numbers.

Records show that it may be seen here up to May 29, although late April to mid-May are optimum times. The blackpoll is known as a late migrant – it winters from northern South America southward to Brazil, and when most north-bound migrants have left their wintering grounds, many blackpolls are still resisting the pull toward home, in no great hurry to arrive in the northern spruce forests from Alaska to Labrador, before spring warms the earth and generates a supply of insects.

With most transient species, we have two chances – one in spring and another in fall. Not so with the blackpoll, whose fall migration is southeasterly across the upper United States and south along the Atlantic seaboard, putting it out of the reach of Mississippi fall birders.

Besides being scarce in most years, the blackpoll deserves its celebrity for other reasons – it stimulates the imagination and the sense of wonder and adventure that are common to birders.

It appears that no Blackpoll Warbler makes a migration that is less that 2,500 miles; most fly more than 5,000 miles between wintering grounds to nesting grounds, hence they are among the champions of long distance migration.

The presence of any blackpoll here in spring attests to an achievement, which, if duly contemplated, should humble all of us. Consider – when this wisp arrives on our Coast, it already has made at least one fall journey to South America, two 500 mile flights over open water and survived the innate hazards of just being a bird for at least 10 months.

I fully expect to meet “my” blackpoll some time this week. When I do, I certainly won’t give it short shrift. Neither should you.

This article was published in May, 1987