A Special Bird Comes Along

by Helen Manson Andrews

Editors note:  From time to time we like to add some of Helen Andrew’s articles she wrote for the Taconic Press. I hope you will enjoy this article..

Often, when you least expect it, a special bird comes along.  One day I was taking my usual walk in the back field.  Around me same the usual birds, prairie and yellow warblers, yellowthroats, catbirds, mockingbirds and wood thrush.  I also heard several blue-winged warblers.  These little yellow birds are sometimes hard to see, they seem to throw their voices and I always seem to look in the wrong places.

Then one flew up to the top most branch of a small dead elm.  I looked up and focused my binoculars.  He threw back his head and, with his tail vibrating, sang his buzzy two-part song.

I thought he looked different, too pale.  The top of his head was yellow and the dark eye line was right but he looked less yellow on the front.  The late afternoon light was not good so I thought maybe I just didn’t see him right.

When I got home, though, I looked up the Brewster’s warbler in the field guide and thought he had looked like this hybrid, a cross breed of the golden-winged and the blue-winged warbler.

The next day I went out earlier when the light was better.  I heard a blue-winged but could not see it.  I moved on to where I had seen it the day before and heard it singing across the creek.  The water was high and some of the usual stepping stones were submerged so I had to wade over.  I found the bird and had a good look.  Sure enough, it was the Brewster’s warbler.
It had the dark back, bright yellow head and dark eyeline of the blue-winged, the white throat and belly and the yellow wing bar of the golden-winged, but had a bright yellow wash across the breast.  It sang the blue-winged song.

The other hybrid of this union is the Lawrence’s warbler.  It has yellow under parts, bluish wing bars and the black face marking of the golden-winged.  We had a few records of these two hybrids and last summer had the first nesting record of the Brewster’s when one was found in the eastern part of the county feeding young.

I will watch this one and maybe I will be lucky and find that it is nesting here too.

Wings Over Dutchess, May 2005
Originally published in the Taconic Press, May 1981

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