When I was up along the Albany River in Ontario in June 2008, several times I heard what sounded like a Chestnut-sided Warbler but always in places that I could not get to in order to check them out visually. I was aware from the Ontario Atlas that the species was quite rare and spotty in this area north of the road network. This past June I was in Yellowknife, NWT and all the Yellow Warblers sounded to my eastern U.S.-trained birding ears remarkably like Chestnut-sideds. This was mainly, I came to realize, because of the endings of the song. I wrote up a little piece about the Yellowknife songs with sonograms and audio links on my blog and also posted some of the comments I received about the songs.
I started wondering whether you hear this variant of the Yellow Warbler song more commonly as you go north and wondered what folks in Ontario have found and if the birds I heard around the Albany were more likely to have been Yellow Warblers that sounded like Chestnut-sideds or real Chestnut-sideds? The story with audio and spectograms about the Yellowknife birds is at: http://www.borealbirds.org/blog/?p=186 and the follow-up comments are at: http://www.borealbirds.org/blog/?p=193 Thanks in advance for any clarification or comment! Jeff Jeff Wells Senior Scientist Boreal Songbird Initiative www.borealbirds.org Author, Birder's Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to ONTBIRDS mailing list [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
