Date: 9/22/25 5:33 am From: szafrica77 via groups.io <slmayhew77...> Subject: Re: [centralvalleybirds] Warblers, sparrows, hummers
Thanks for the update Manfred. Interesting about the hummingbird migration routes. I’ll be rooting for that Anna’s!
I have had a male Western tanager visiting my fountain to take a bath for 7 days now! Surprised how long it has hung around. A first for me in West Davis.
Sarah Mayhew
> On Sep 21, 2025, at 9:23 PM, kuschmanfred via groups.io <makusch...> wrote:
>
> The first White-crowned and Golden-crowned sparrows showed up in my garden today, quite late, as so many arrivals, nest building starts and departures this year. They were preceded in the last week by a Fox Sparrow and two days ago by a Lincoln’s Sparrow.
>
> As others have also reported, passerine migration around here has so far been quite a bit below average especially during the earlier weeks from August into early September. Mostly a few Wilson’s, one Nashville, a couple of Orange-crowned, and then more recently an influx of Yellow Warblers, as is typical in September, one Black-throated Gray Warbler a few days ago and only low numbers of Western Tanagers so far. Late September would typically be the time I would see Townsend’s Warblers but no luck so far. No Warbling vireos either.
>
> Adult male Black-chinned Hummingbirds had left by the end of August followed by the few remaining females and by last weekend the hatch-year birds that persisted in my garden the longest had also left, marked by a noticeable drop in sugar water consumption.
>
> Rufous Hummingbirds have been passing through since late July. The UCD researchers who have been trapping hummingbirds in my garden for the last 4 weekends after some longer hiatus typically catch and tag 1-3 Rufous early in the morning, all hatch-year birds, both male and female. Interestingly, at this time of year. I rarely see a Rufous during the day time but again in late afternoon and evening. I wonder if these birds arrive in my garden late in the day to refuel, spend the night, fuel up again and continue their migration southward.
>
> Since (at least some) hatch-year Rufous appear to migrate south along the path that the adults follow during their spring migration north, i.e., Western California, and then switch to the eastern migration route the next fall as all the adult Rufous do, it raises the question what triggers this switch in migration behavior.In all the years I have observed hummingbirds in my garden, I have only once confirmed an adult male Rufous hummer during fall migration. How do these birds know where to go after they have successfully migrated on a different route in their youth, so to speak. Have researchers theorized about this?
>
> And a last hummer note. This morning, Lisa Tell, the lead researcher for the UCD hummingbird study, trapped a male Anna’s Hummingbird that she had banded as a hatch-year bird in Nov. 2018 long before the study team switched from banding to radio tagging. Quite amazing that such a small bird could survive and thrive for so long, apparently still about 1 year short of the longevity record of 8.5 years for an Anna’s . So if our friend makes it through the winter into next summer he may break the record.
>
> Manfred Kusch
> 3 miles west of Davis
> South bank of Putah Creek
>
>
>
>
>
>
