On a cloudy, humid Wednesday afternoon, I wandered through the mature floodplain forest, upland woods, and meadows of River Valley Park in northeast Ames. Although most of the individual migrant species were not yet in great numbers, a wide variety of new arrivals helped to make the overall diversity much better than I've ever encountered here so early in May. As would be expected at this point in the season, a majority of the migrants were males, including many that were singing rather frequently.
New arrivals and various other songbirds included the following. -Least Flycatcher - 2 singing -Great Crested Flycatcher - 2 -Yellow-throated Vireo - 3 -Blue-headed Vireo - 2 -Red-eyed Vireo - 4 -Sedge Wren - 1 -Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 1 -Gray-cheeked Thrush - 1 -Swainson's Thrush - 6 -Gray Catbird - 2 -Ovenbird - 1 -Northern Waterthrush - 12 - among migrants, these were outnumbered only by Yellow-rumped Warblers -Golden-winged Warbler - 1 -Black-and-white Warbler - 3 -Prothonotary Warbler -->male found at an agglomeration of logs/brush along the river; a park first for me -Tennessee Warbler - 9 -Orange-crowned Warbler - 3 -Nashville Warbler - 4 -Common Yellowthroat - 1 -American Redstart - 2 -Northern Parula - 6 -Bay-breasted Warbler - 1 -Yellow Warbler - 1 -Blackpoll Warbler - 1 -Palm Warbler - 7 -Yellow-rumped Warbler - 35; still included around a dozen singing males of this mid-spring migrant -Black-throated Green Warbler - 4 -Clay-colored Sparrow - 1 near the power line right-of-way -Lark Sparrow - 1 along the meadow-crop border at the park's east end -White-throated Sparrow - 5 -White-crowned Sparrow - 1 -Rose-breasted Grosbeak - 6 -Indigo Bunting - 1 -Baltimore Oriole - 4 Good Birding, Shane Patterson Ames, Story County --- Please contribute your sightings to our list; it is only as good as members make it! --- Birding channel recommendation for FRS/GMRS radio use: Primary selection; channel 5/0 , alternate selection; channel 6/0 --- This mailing list is sponsored by the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. Membership available on-line at http://www.iowabirds.org/iou/PayDues.aspx. ----- You are currently subscribed to ia-bird as: [email protected]
