Pandemic self-quarantine has led many to develop a closer connection with their bird feeder flock than they ever envisioned. While some birds at the feeder are year-round residents, such as Carolina chickadees, Northern cardinals, downy woodpeckers and house finches, others are migrants who will be departing momentarily.
Enjoy your last glimpses of dark-eyed juncos, as only the stragglers from more southerly wintering grounds are coming through now. In this species, the slaty-black males winter farther north than the tan-gray females, so it may seem as though your juncos are getting paler as the later-migrating females replace the departing males.
White-throated sparrows are looking ragged right now as they undergo a quick replacement molt of just their head stripes in advance of migrating north to show off on the breeding ground. Males depart first, with a few females lingering into the first week of May.
Yellow-bellied sapsuckers are not often seen at feeders, but they work a trapline of tiny sapholes that they cut into the bark of your big yard trees, so you are feeding them whether you like it or not. The last of the sapsuckers have already left for northern hardwood forests.
One of the two warblers that visited your suet feeder all winter, the yellow-rumped warbler, has transformed from a dull, streaky brown bird into a boldly-patterned vision of blue, yellow, black and white. Enjoy its handsome breeding plumage today, and listen for that hesitant warbling song, because these migrants will be headed far to the north within a few weeks. Our other feeder warbler, the uniformly green-yellow pine warbler, is a year-round resident, although they do not visit feeders once insects are available.
Ruby-crowned kinglets occasionally enjoy suet cakes, or more often, peck around feeders looking for bugs. These tiny olive-green sprites are overlooked by many birders, because their dime-sized namesake head plumage is only displayed when they are agitated. In the last few weeks these reticent skulkers have transformed into bold songsters spilling out their outrageously unstructured songs from every holly and shrub. It’s a hard song to learn because it is much louder than one would expect from such a tiny bird, and it pours out like improvised jazz, never performed the same way twice. Kinglets will leave before the end of the month.
The hermit thrush is another common yard bird that will head to northern mountains within days. Once, while climbing down Mount Katahdin in Maine, I met an old, old man who was struggling up the trail. He told me he just wanted to hear the hermit thrush’s magical song one more time before he died. Had he wanted to skip the climb, he could have pulled up a lawn chair in his yard on the thrush’s winter range, where, in the first weeks of April, they practice their repertoires. These early renditions are quiet, and the hermit thrush is shy and returning as the name suggests, but with patience you can hear a haunting, flute-like concert in any small patch of woods nearby.
As always, I recommend that you keep feeding the birds year-round if they are providing enjoyment, perhaps more so if you are a pandemic shut-in. But no matter what morsels you put out, nothing will tempt the migrants among your flock from abandoning you to achieve their life’s purpose on the breeding grounds.
Dan Cristol teaches in the Biology Department at the College of William and Mary and can be contacted at dacris@wm.edu. To discover local birding opportunities visit williamsburgbirdclub.org.
