After some good exchanges with other CObirders off list, I feel more confident in calling this bird a *Blue-Winged Warbler.* Mark Miller pointed out that a Blue-Winged Warbler loitered in a Jeffco park for several weeks in 2015, and this led me to dig through the cobirds archive to discover nearly-annual sightings of this bird somewhere along the Front Range, as well as in SE Colorado and South Park. So this makes the RMNP Endovalley location a bit more plausible. Two of us watched it for a good bit of time - and we feel confident about the field marks we saw.
I also found several records of 'different' songs for this bird and suggestions that (here at least) they often hang out with Yellow Warblers. I can imagine that a wandering bird (or progeny thereof) without good same-species models might pick up a song that is more like that of another locally singing species - particularly if the reason the individual is out of its usual range, or at the ragged edge, is that it is less fit to begin with. - Sandra Laursen On Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 10:24:40 PM UTC-6, Sandra Laursen wrote: > > Yesterday we saw a warbler that puzzled us in the Endovalley picnic area > at Rocky Mt NP. Distinctive features included grey wings with white bars, > bright yellow breast and throat fading to a duller color on the back and > tail, and bright yellow head with a definite black eye stripe. It was > flitting around and feeding on some kind of insect it was finding in an > aspen tree. The song was similar to the 'swee swee' notes of a Virginia's > or MacGillivray's but shorter- usually 5 repeated notes and no fading or > fiddly ending. We have scoured the books trying to identify it - it > looked a lot like the Blue-Winged Warbler but didn't sound like the > recordings of that bird (and would be wildly off course ). The other > warblers that make sense for the park seem to have much more grey and black > than this one; the yellow was quite bold. Suggestions? > > While in the park we also enjoyed the Ring-Necked Ducks on Lily Lake and > the Clark's Nutcrackers at Rainbow Curve on Trail Ridge Road. My > Australian friend was quite delighted with the Stellers Jays. > > - Sandra Laursen > Boulder > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/f29d1c77-3008-4a6f-83d7-908990dcbdf9%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
