1st winter female Hooded Warbler
By Charlie • January 11, 2007 • 2 comments1st winter female Hooded Warbler Wilsonia citrina
Cascade Creek (near Ano Nuevo State Reserve), California. 11 January 2007
On the 11th of January 2007 I had the most memorable two hours birding I’ve had for a long time watching wintering warblers feeding over a thick pile of rotting sprouts in a field at Cascade Creek close to the Ano Nuevo State Reserve (near Pescadero and just off Highway 1).
The smell coming from this pile of liquifying veg was - well, ‘interesting’ (and also clinging and penetrating, especially when I mistook what turned out to be a thin dry crust for solid ground and sank up to my ankles into a viscous brown gloop) but watching tens of Townsend’s and Yellow-rumped Warblers dipping their bills into a soup of festering vegetables just a few feet away more than compensated for the stink coming up from my trainers (though Jack Cole, San Jose resident and long-suffering friend who I went to Ana Nuevo with, did apparently take rather a long time to hose the ‘delicate aroma’ out of his car after I’d gone back to the UK - sorry for that!) .
The undoubted star of this colourful show, though, was the 1st winter female Hooded Warbler (a scarce bird in California) in the photos below which gave remarkably good views as it stayed in a small sheltered area by some brambles, flicking across the sprout goo picking off small flies like a lemon-yellow flycatcher…stunning…
Once identified as a female Hooded Warbler - no other American warbler shows a combination of such lemon-yellow colouring, uniformly plain green wings and mantle, and extensive white in the tail - the bird is easily aged as a first-winter by the lack of even a suggestion of a dark hood (adult females always show some dark feathering on the head), and the sharply pointed retrices (tail-feathers) which are particularly visible in a rear view and are more rounded in adult birds.
Female Hooded Warblers typically winter in scrubby habitats (separate from males who prefer less disturbed, mature forest and exclude females from their winter territories) and this beautiful 1st winter bird had found what it obviously thought were ideal conditions - without having had to expend the energy of flying down to southern Mexico or Central America. Ironically though, in mid-January 2007 California suffered a period of extremely unusual cold weather, and - having first been found by Francis Toldi on the Ano Nuevo Xmas Bird Count on December 30th 2006 - the bird succumbed to an unusually hard frost on the night of January 20th and was found dead the next day.
All photos copyright Charlie Moores
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11-3-08: I live outside of Lodi, CA and though not an avid birder, I like to know what I am seeing. I was surprised to see a male hooded warbler take up residence in the conifers outside my window and explore the eaves of our back porch. He has been here for about two weeks. I don’t know if he is a late migrant and rather accompanying yellow rump warblers, or whether he will winter here. I read that they are uncommon on the West Coast.
@Jacey: That’s a pretty good bird for the West Coast. My guess, if the bird has been around for two weeks, is that it is looking to winter (but who knows?).