Individual raindrops, when they hit the ground, coalesce with other drops as they run downhill, eventually forming rivulets, then streams and then mighty rivers. But remember: these mighty rivers begin with a trickle made up of individual drops.

This analogy sort of jumped into my head yesterday morning when we were out banding – shaking out the nets, checking to see what was around and what was going on. We caught three Yellow Warblers (two are pictured above); they were all young of the year (HY or Hatch Year to use the vernacular). Two of them still undergoing their first pre-basic Moult (1st PB) and were showing no fat loading. (In the first pre-basic moult a young warbler replaces most of its body feathers and some of its wing feathers – the secondary coverts – but none of its major flight feathers, tail, or primary coverts. Once this energy-demanding feat is finished the bird can concentrate on putting on fat in preparation for migration.) But one of the warblers had finished its moult and had put on a considerable amount of fat, scoring almost “4” on a scale that goes up to “6”. Birds, unlike humans, don’t bulk up with fat due to poor lifestyle choices (like too many muffins….is that even possible I wonder?) but because it needs fuel (and fat equals fuel) to power its migration. So, clearly, this bird was either on its way or very close to being on its way.

In our experience, Yellow Warblers don’t hang around. Once the young ones fledge and are on their own, they begin to disperse, checking out the area around them for future reference (thinking of next year’s breeding possibilities). While they do this they complete their moult. The parents in the meantime go through a “complete” moult, replacing ALL their feathers. During this time they tend to be pretty reclusive, moving around enough to feed and gather the energy that moulting requires but not much else – without all their flight feathers they aren’t as manoeuvrable and thus less able to escape predation. But in both cases, once the respective moults are completed, the birds start putting on fat and begin to head south soon thereafter. At Ruthven, most Yellow Warblers are gone by the end of July and after the first week of August they’re a rarity.

For me it’s an awe-inspiring thing to hold a bird, like that Yellow Warbler, and contemplate the journey that it is about to undertake, to consider the country it will see, the obstacles that it will have to overcome. Here in my hand was an early “drop” that will form part of an enormous river that will wash through our skies in the next few months. I wonder how many people will even be aware of it……

I just got back from 3 weeks at sea, counting seabirds from a DFO research vessel off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. We were over 120 Nautical miles out to sea when, much to my surprise, a Yellow-rumped Warbler landed on the bow of the vessel. It was a male in bright breeding plumage. It stayed with the vessel throughout the day, poking into every nook and cranny (and there’s lot of them on a big vessel like this) looking for insects, of which there were quite a few. It wasn’t around the next day so I’m hoping that it took advantage of the light NE winds that came up in the night and high-tailed it back to the mainland. Wouldn’t you love to know its story?

But, speaking of rivulets…..a couple of hundred miles off the coast of Labrador I came upon a number of small flocks of Red Phalaropes. Phalaropes are amazing little birds. They breed in the Arctic and spend their winters well out to sea feeding on planktonic organisms south of the equator. When I saw them they were bobbing around like corks plucking tiny organisms from the surface. But the important thing here is that it was just the third week of July and yet here they were, already well on their way south. Initially, for the first 10 days or so, all the phalaropes I saw were adults – either failed breeders or successful breeders that had left their young ones to fend for themselves (as shorebirds are wont to do). It wasn’t until the end of the month that I began to see juveniles. More drops in that huge river that is beginning to swell and head south.
Rick