Warblers’ return signals high point of spring

The warblers are back!

There are many other birds whose return I eagerly anticipate every spring; however, these small songsters seem to be the epitome of the season. They are strikingly, if not brilliantly, colored, and catching a glimpse of one is an exciting event. Because they are small and spend the majority of their time foraging among foliage – oftentimes high within the tree canopy – they are more often heard rather than seen. Then, it is a challenge – albeit an enjoyable one – to identify them by voice alone.

Identifying birds by song is never an exact science. Interpretation is sometimes subjective, and some species have songs that don’t lend themselves to phonetic memory aids. Although I listen regularly to Peterson’s “Birding by Ear” CDs, there is always at least one bird that stumps me in the field. This was especially so within the last week.

I spent Memorial Day weekend with a group of hiking and camping buddies at South Branch Pond in Baxter State Park. On Sunday we decided to do the Pogy Notch Trail around the east side of the pond, then connect to the South Branch Mountain Trail. This promised to be good exercise as well as good birding (as it turned out, we were a tad rusty with both).

It was good birding, especially because the trees had not reached full bloom. If we couldn’t ID the bird by sound, we could still locate it relatively easily to confirm our guesses. And this was a good thing, because we were stumped again and again.

“Was that a yellow-rumped warbler?” My only birding friend of the group asked me.

“Well, the yellow-rumped does sing two songs. This sounded like its two-part song, but the second syllable went up,” I said.

We heard the song again.

“Now it sounded like the second syllable went down -does it ever go down in pitch?” I asked. The rest of our hiking group waited patiently, looking on in bemusement. They were used to this.

We listened to the bird sing several more times, and couldn’t come to an agreement.

We began searching for the bird, craning our necks up painfully and peering into the trees. Finally we saw the sneaky culprit – an American redstart. The males are outstanding in breeding dress: flaming orange patches on their sides, wings, and tails, along with their white bellies, which stand out vividly in contrast to the black plumage elsewhere on their bodies. The females have an olive-gray plumage with yellow patches.

Convinced we had the redstart’s song down pat, we continued on. How wrong we were! We heard several more songs, and each time we misidentified them – and each time the singer turned out to be a redstart. The bird guide says its song is variable, with a rendition that also resembles a black and white warbler’s; it also states that it “sometimes alternates various songs.”

No kidding!

I still can’t say that I’d know a redstart the next time I heard one. It might take a few more times of listening to their song variations to become sure. But that’s OK. The truth is I just enjoy the songs, and would hope others do as well, regardless of whether they can identify the singers. I’ve recently discovered that at least one member of my hiking group has come to appreciate them.

As a matter of fact, she’s begun to pass that appreciation on. Sandy Knox runs a children’s daycare center in Eddington. She is devoted to the children under her care, and finds ways to spark their interest in the world around them. She said she had begun to call their attention to birdsong.

One day, a parent recounted how she had gone to close her son’s bedroom window as she was putting him to bed.

“Please don’t close the window, Mommy,” her son said. “I want to listen to the birds – listen, can’t you hear them?”

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com