Yellow-throated Warbler Lenawee County

[Karl Overman]

Today, April 24th,  I saw a singing Yellow-throated Warbler at  
Tecumseh along the Raison River in Lenawee County at the Indian  
Crossings Park.  I first heard the bird distantly as I walked the  
wooded trail above the west side of the river.   To see the bird I  
had to go back to M-50 and then bushwack my way up the east side of  
the river until I reached the sycamore grove that the warbler was  
singing in. This requires either wet feet or waders at this time of  
year.

The history of Yellow-throated Warbler in Michigan is an interesting  
one. Barrow (1912) ironically reports that in the 19th century it was  
known to breed along the Raison River in Monroe County.  It was  
extirpated as a breeding bird in Michigan around 1906 (David Evers,  
Expansion of the Yellow-throated Warbler in the Southern Great Lakes  
Region MB:1:1 p4 1994). It was not until 1969 that the now well known  
population in Berrien County along the Galien River was discovered.   
As for Lenawee  County, Jeff Greenhouse and Al Maley had them there  
in 1975 and 1976.  Darrien O'Brien regularly found them at the  
Tecumseh site in the 1990s before his straying off to Kentucky.  Once  
back in Michigan, he and his wife Julie Craves had  2-4 singing males  
along the Raison River at this locale on May 26, 2003.  Obviously  
this is a regular location for this rare breeding bird for Michigan.

Black-throated Gray Warbler
I should mention that I was part of the group who saw this vagrant  
late today at 7:00 p.m..  The bird was feeding high in the canopy of  
deciduous trees near the top of the ridge above the evergreen grove  
where it had been seen earlier in the day.  Congrats to Aaron  
Gertiser for spotting it for the rest of us.

Karl Overman
Farmington Hills, Mi.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/mich-listers/attachments/20070424/31e398fa/attachment.html