Day 337 - Migrants = Warblers

Okay, I am ready to give up a major family of birds--the migrants. And if you read the title you now know that MIGRANTS = WARBLERS. Now I'll save you the trouble of going through the list and figuring out how many migrants are listed--just 18. This doesn't include 3 species which I called by other names which are included in the list below. So 21 species of warblers in a year. How many states can you eliminate with that information? Quite a few, so I won't do any favors and list them--it's pretty easy.  But here are the warblers I saw in 2016:


I actually missed 4 species of warblers in Narnia this year. 2 that I absolutely should have gotten, and 2 that I chased and couldn't relocate. The one breeder that I missed was stupid on my part. I kept making excuses that I would get it later, and well, later never came. One of the regular migrants I missed because I thought I could stretch its migration window based on sightings in nearby states. I missed the height of migration and in turn missed it all together. Both of these species I easily picked up in my previous big year which really made them sting.

Of the other two species which are both vagrants, I was at the park where one was seen 3 hours after it had been found. A big storm had come through the night before, and the winds were awful. A friend and I spent an hour scouring the trees, shrubs, etc, and couldn't make it appear. I thought for sure I was going to add this bird as the park was rather small so I figured we would be able to track it down. The wind probably hurt as we couldn't hear if it were singing or calling. In the end, I didn't have it on my expected species list, so it wasn't a huge miss, just a frustrating could have been.

The other warbler I missed that was reported was simply bad timing. I was out of town when it was reported and by the time I was able to go look it had moved on. It was a long shot given the location, but that's birding. I had listed it as a possible for this year as they are almost reported annually in Narnia--and yet it remains a nemesis for me :)

There was also one other species reported that was misidentified. I definitely didn't waste my energy trying to track it down since the pictures showed what species it was.

Three other species of warbler that are reported most years weren't reported at all this year. That's was a pretty big let down as I sort of expected a fall turn out of warbler migrants to help buoy my list. It just never happened. The unexpected combined with my lack of proper planning for two other species left me a bit short on warblers. 25 species should have been a reasonable outcome.

Now let's just hope a meg doesn't show up in Narnia in the next few weeks... Then I might have to make up a whole new name to keep the secret for a couple days!

New birds today: 0
Year List: 353

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