Date: 9/18/25 8:11 am From: Barry E. Blust <000001f03823f4f3-dmarc-request...> Subject: Re: Warblers drinking nectar
I had never observed Eastern Kingbirds eating fruit until this past June at Rushton Farm in Chester County. There I saw a cherry tree with multiple species consuming the cherries, including an Eastern Kingbird and a Scarlet Tanager. The ebird checklist w/ photos is here: https://ebird.org/atlaspa/checklist/S251046676.
Barry E. Blust
21 Rabbit Run Lane
Glenmoore, PA
Upper Uwchlan Township, Chester County
<BarryBlust...>
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
-- John Muir
-----Original Message-----
From: Bird discussion list for Pennsylvania <PABIRDS...> On Behalf Of SCOTT WEIDENSAUL
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2025 11:14 AM
To: <PABIRDS...>
Subject: Re: [PABIRDS] Warblers drinking nectar
Ron,
The short answer is that I don’t know where kingbirds make that transition, though I assume it’s shortly after crossing into the tropics on their southbound migration. Back when I spent part of every spring banding birds at Fort Morgan on the Alabama coast, we would occasionally catch kingbirds with dried fruit pulp on their beaks and foreheads, which suggests they were still eating fruit before making their trans-Gulf flight north, but the ones we observed around the banding station were always hawking insects from the air.
The single most amazing eastern kingbird experience I’ve ever had was just prior to the pandemic, co-leading a riverboat trip in the Peruvian Amazon in February 2020. The eastern kingbirds were still present, nearing the end of their non-breeding season there, while large numbers of fork-tailed flycatchers, which are austral migrants that leave their breeding grounds in the southern cone of South America, had just arrived. The result was flocks of thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of these two species in the genus Tyrannus roosting in giant reed beds along the Ucayali River — for a brief time, an overlap of migration from opposite ends of the hemisphere.
Scott Weidensaul
Milton, NH
> On Sep 15, 2025, at 10:48 AM, Ron Rovansek <rrovansek...> wrote:
>
> Scott,
> I have always thought the transformation of eastern kingbirds, named for being pugnacious and territorial, into flocking fruit eaters is among the most amazing seasonal changes in bird behavior (although if we spent time among nesting shorebirds and waterfowl we would probably see similarly amazing transformations). Do you know when or where kingbirds switch to fruit? I haven’t noticed them eating fruit in PA even during migration.
>
> Ron Rovansek
> Centre County
>
> On Sep 15, 2025, at 6:59 AM, SCOTT WEIDENSAUL <000001343b2dd726-dmarc-request...> wrote:
>
> I suspect we find the notion of warblers drinking nectar surprising because we have a skewed, temperate-zone bias about what warblers are “supposed” to eat.
>
> Cape Mays are a great example — they may be insectivorous in summer, but they depend so heavily on nectar and fruit on their Caribbean non-breeding grounds that their tongues have evolved to more efficiently lap liquid, being somewhat tubular and slightly fringed. I’ve seen Cape Mays defending patches of flowers on blossoming mango trees in Jamaica, chasing away red-billed streamertail hummingbirds. And while not warblers, eastern kingbirds undergo a remarkable Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation in diet and behavior, switching from highly territorial obligate insectivores in North America to highly gregarious fruit-eaters in Amazonia, flocking together by the thousands.
>
> Scott Weidensaul
> Milton, NH (formerly Schuylkill Co.)
>
> On Sep 15, 2025, at 9:12 AM, Michael Fialkovich <0000012b4af48ab0-dmarc-request...> wrote:
>
> Interesting. I've seen Cape May warblers in spring dipping their bills into Black Willow flowers during migration to extract the nectar. I've also seen Tennessee Warblers (and have a photo of one) sipping nectar from flowers in Costa Rica.
>
> I also saw a Black-throated Blue Warbler once at Presque Isle visiting sapsucker wells to sip the sap.
>
>
> Mike Fialkovich
> Pittsburgh Area, Allegheny County
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 04:12:52 PM EDT, Franklin Haas <fhaasbirds...> wrote:
>
> Two years ago I had 2 Black-throated Blue Warblers drinking the nectar out
> of my Cuphea (Mexican Cigar Plants). Just now, I had a Tennessee Warbler
> doing the same.
>
> Frank Haas
>
> Wisdom begins with putting the right name to a thing.
>
