On my third visit of the season to central Lake County (Cat Lake area) on July 8-9 I found five more singing black-throated blue warblers, as well as a pair feeding a fledgling, for a total of 13 singing males in three visits. While their numbers seem to have been gradually increasing away from the North Shore for some time (witness Minnesota Biological Survey results:http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/eco/mcbs/birdmaps/black_throated_blue_w arbler_map.pdf), they seem to have really jumped this summer. Someone who lives on the Shore mentioned she'd noticed a general lack of breeding birds this season, perhaps because of consecutive cold springs, which led us to speculate BTBWs may be "packing" into central Lake County, rather than attempting breeding in their more traditional North Shore spots. Has anyone visited places like Oberg Mountain or Tettegouche SP this summer and noted numbers of BTBWs as a way to test this hypothesis?
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