Counting the Months Until Warblers

Male blue-winged warbler in our orchard.

It's early November here in southeastern Ohio. Daylight Savings Time is no longer in effect, making the days seem shorter than they actually are. The air is cooler—verging on cold. The trees have lost their collective grip on their foliage, leaving dark spiderwebs of their naked branches etching patterns on (mostly) leaden skies.

I already miss the warblers.

Most years we have a dozen species of eastern wood warblers nesting at Indigo Hill. From April through early October we can see and hear them. Now in November, when the landscape seems tired—resigned to the killing frosts and weak sunshine of another winter, we have the occasional yellow-rumpeds passing through, issuing their soft tchups to one another. They won't linger here on the ridge where the wind blows cold. They'll spend the winter along the river eating dried pokeweed berries and poison ivy and sumac fruits, taking advantage of the micro hatches of insects on sunny winter days.

Yellow-rumped warbler in winter plumage.

I was editing some video the other day. It was footage I shot on our farm during an interview last summer. The amount of bird song audible in the background of the footage was stunning. Indigo bunting, common yellowthroat, blue-winged warbler, prairie warbler, hooded warbler, yellow-breasted chat, red-eyed vireo, white-eyed vireo—they've all gone south now.

Prairie warbler, male, singing along the edge of our meadow.

Funny how the spring and summer bird song chorus just sneaks up on you. A few more birds chime in each week until the singing is nearly constant. Yet your ears have grown accustomed to it to the point where you don't really notice it. Now, in the relatively quiet days of early winter, that bird noise on the video is a startling reminder of what we had all around us just a short while ago. My how things change with the seasons!

So I'm counting the days—months really—until the warblers and other migrant songbirds return and the air is once more filled with song.