The Truth About Warblers

Warblers are irritating, and that’s the truth. It’s a beautiful spring morning, the mist just disappearing and the sun promising a full Monty. I take my binoculars and stroll quietly down to the mailboxes and, just like yesterday, there is a yellow warbler singing full bore, "whichety, whichety, whichety." Where? Must be right there in that bush. But I can’t see it. No. Have I ever seen that bird there? No. She/he flits from branch to branch veiled by the baby yellow-green leaves of spring, barely hatched. The sound has moved. I try to scan with the binoculars. The sound is close, here by my ear, no, over there to the right, "whitchety, whitchety, whichetey…" out of the corner of my right eye I see a tease of yellow.

 

Ok, be like that. I’ll try another spot. I walk slowly up the trail, listening for sound, looking for another swipe of yellow, or any color on the wing, and at the crest of the hill, right there on the lowest branch of the big maple, right where the branch hangs out over the turn in the trail, a myrtle warbler. The creature deigns to pause long enough for me to be sure, black and white sides, a little cap of yellow on the head , a yellow-rump – myrtle warblers are also known as yellow rumped warblers – and he opens his tiny beak to let out a peal of notes before opps, gone, but not really gone because I can hear him to the far side of me now. I catch another fleeting glimpse, and then there are two of them and they disappear into the bushes. Not much hope of finding a warbler in a thicket of leaves and weeds but I am slowly scanning the area with my binoculars, about a foot off the ground, when I see the nest.

 

If I lower the glasses I can’t see anything in that bundle of quivering green but fortunately I have not moved from the spot and staying very still, feet frozen to the ground, I find them again with the binoculars. There are two of them, flying in and out in rapid succession, making maybe ten landings a minute with a bit of reed or dried grass. The male warbler, I think it’s the male, a little bigger and brighter than his mate, hops right into the nest which holds his shape like a cup, turns around and around, molding the shape to his body, then out and away, but only a few seconds later she appears and does the same. The nest is in the crotch of a tree and I take time to notice the way a few of the wider grasses have been used to strap the nest to the branches on either side. It is a very neat nest and as they work on it it grows higher until I can see only the tip of a perky tail, or a touch of yellow on the head as they twist and turn within the bowl they have created.

And then the curious arrive: on a branch at eye level quite plain to see a yellow-throated warbler announces his joy in the day; across the road a dark eyed, brown bird, rather shy but not too shy to fly away crosses the road and checks me out. To the left a robin flies over, in the woods I can hear the rusty-hinge caw-caw of a pair of those blue jays who are probably full of my bird seed, – and all in the space of twenty minutes. I am still stiff and frozen to the spot. I don’t dare to move. What will appear next? But no one new shows up. The industrious myrtle warblers are still at it so I try to mark the spot where I am standing without making enough commotion to scare off the next person-watcher bird and wander home, a little dazed, a little satiated, a little intoxicated with the beauty of May and those irritating little warblers.