Date: 4/25/24 8:12 pm From: Ed Newbold via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: [Tweeters] Migration was yesterday at Butyl, but today, do birds not bathe in the rain?
Hi all,
Yesterday the migration was up and running on Butyl Creek, with an estimated 45 Yellow-rumped Warblers, an estimated 8 Orange-crowned Warblers, plus a Wilson's Warbler, Lincoln Sparrow (3 bath visits), a Hermit Thrush and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet (3 visits) (counting that as a migrant) plus a whole heck of a lot of bath-taking. When you have a creek and see the amount of bathing these birds do, you begin to wonder if it is really important to them in some way that people don't fully appreciate. Also, they seem to do it socially. Nobody bathes in the morning but around lunchtime everybody comes in, then a couple hours later then of course you need an evening bath.
Today the creek was unbelievably quiet with only a few Warblers and some resident non-migrants stopping by.
It was raining. Maybe they don't bathe as much in the rain? It might seem to make sense. There is so little actual day-long rain in this area that we don't get a feel for whether the no-bathing-in-the-rain thing is real.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
Cheers,
Ed Newbold (and Delia Scholes who keeps us in the game and does the research.)
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