In May, several Chestnut-sided Warblers spent a few weeks on our block looking for insects and adding to the bird chorus with their sweet “Pleased, pleased, pleased to MEETCHA” song. Because our spring was so chilly and the plants got a very late start, my serviceberry was in full bloom when the birds arrived. Many species, including the Chestnut-sided Warblers, hopped around in it plucking insects attracted to those flowers.
These warblers don’t migrate as far north as some of the other spring migrating birds which is maybe why they can hang around my neighborhood for a bit longer each May. In Wisconsin their breeding grounds start in the central part of the state. Most of the other warblers that pass through our area head to northern Wisconsin or Canada.
The Audubon Guide to North American Birds website says that the Chestnut-sided Warbler is “apparently much more numerous today than it was historically: John James Audubon, roaming eastern North America in the early 1800s, saw this bird only once. The cutting of forests evidently has created more brushy habitat for Chestnut-sided Warblers, even as it has made other birds less common.”
And it IS easier to spot this species of warblers because they prefer searching for insects in small shrubs and thickets rather than at the tops of trees like many of the other warbler species.
Chestnut-sided warblers eat a lot of caterpillars and fly larvae among other insects, and they prefer to find their prey on the undersides of leaves.
In the fall they’ll come through our area again on their way to their wintering grounds in Central and South America.