May 27, 2024 – Warblers! | Wings Over Skagit

I believe I’ve mentioned in prior posts that I’ve been disappointed in the 2024 spring migration. I kept detailed records for the month of May in 2023 and there was a steady stream of migrants. This year there have been many days with only a single warbler showing up, and some days without any. This year the warblers seemed to make good showings on only a few days, and I realized that certain species seemed to arrive about the same time as opposed to the mixed species I observed last year. However, there have been several days with a good many warblers and May 27th was one of them.

The day began overcast and remained that way for the entire day, giving me a perfect day for photography. I set up in the yard at about 10:15am and remained there, except for a one hour mid-afternoon nap, until about 4:30pm. During that time I took 490 photographs (not a record for me!) and after processing retained 221.

There was a fairly steady stream of Wilson’s warblers of both sexes. At one point I had two males in the yard and at another point there were two females in the yard, but except for those two instances it was usually a single warbler at a time. I was unable to photograph many of the warblers because they didn’t come near enough, were too active or were obscured by sticks and leaves.

Late in the afternoon I had a pair of Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warblers enter the yard… the female bathed in one of our water features while the male watched.

And the only other warbler that I saw or photographed was what I think was a female Yellow warbler, the only Yellow warbler I’ve seen this year.

I left the yard about 4:20pm, but immediately returned when I looked out a window and saw another female Wilson’s warbler. It was good I did… this female was very cooperative and in about 10 minutes time I had taken 56 photos of her on a variety of staging objects. I retained 31 of those photos and (subjectively) rated 16 of them at a ‘5’, my highest quality rating!