Last year (2023) we experienced our largest spring migration in the month of May, so by the end of April of this year I was on high alert for spring migrants. I had begun having one or two sightings of Orange-crowned warblers a day by about mid-April and just a handful of Yellow-rumped warblers.  I spent considerable time in the yard with not much to show for it. 

April 24, 2024, dawned overcast with intermittent drizzle, what I consider perfect weather for photography. I was in the yard by 10am and by 11am, an hour later, I had lost count of the number of Orange-crowned warblers that had I had seen in the yard. (My estimate was somewhere in excess of 10.)  I also had a single male Yellow-rumped warbler during the same time period. 

I saw no warblers from 11am to noon and took a break, returning to the yard about 1pm. Between 1pm and 2pm I saw about four male Yellow-rumped warblers and many more Orange-crowned warblers.  

I took a long afternoon break but returned to the yard again just after 5pm after seeing another Orange-crowned warbler at one of our water features. At that point the onslaught began!  Over the next hour or so I don’t think there was ever a time without a warbler in the yard, and at times I could count as many as four of each of the two species I’ve mentioned (OCWA & YRWA) in the yard at the same time!  (Most if not all of the Yellow-rumped warblers were males and most were Audubon’s, although there were some Myrtle’s warblers as well.)  It became absolutely impossible to even estimate the number of sightings. I was continuously occupied with photographing warblers at our various water and staging features. 

There was a lull about 4:30pm and I retreated to my office to download photos from my camera (Nikon D850 with Nikon 500mm lens)  to my computer.  As I began the download in my office I glanced out the widow and saw a female Black-throated Gray warbler (BTGW) in the watercourse below me!  This is one of the rarest warblers for our yard… I never saw a single one last year!  

I ran down the stairs, grabbed my camera and tried to sneak back into the yard. I managed one really good photo of the female BTGW and several of lesser quality. While I was in the yard the onslaught continued and I managed 240 photos until I judged the light was of such quality that further photos were of no use (about 5:40pm). My take of yard photos for the day… 674, a personal record for our yard and the preponderance of which were of warblers!  

I do much of my photo processing and writing in the wee hours of the morning so as to preserve the daylight hours for bird photography. I’ll be processing the day’s photos for a long time!  

I expect that there will be another influx of warblers since I didn’t see a single Wilson’s warbler (WIWA), the warbler I consider the most common for our yard. My problem now will be how to balance processing time for my photos with time spent looking for and photographing new migrants. 

Not to be ignored, a male Rufous hummingbird…

and what is probably a male first-year Anna’s hummingbird.