Spring Birds Along the Rio Grande, #2. Wow! Beautiful birds and beautiful birdsong. The Western tanagers and Yellow-rumped warblers are migrating through, and will be gone pretty soon. The former will move to higher elevations and/or further north. The latter (seen here) is a variant of the Yellow-rumped , called a Myrtle warbler, and it, too, will move into higher elevation. The Bewick’s wren may stick around, as could the Western kingbird. We look very much forward to these spring birds!
Who else are we expecting as the summer comes on? We are on the lookout for Black-crowned night herons, Yellow-breasted chats, Say’s phoebes, Black-headed grosbeaks, Blue grosbeaks, Indigo buntings, Wilson’s and Yellow warblers and yesterday we saw a Bullock’s oriole. The hummingbirds here now are the Black-chinned and Broad-tailed. In July the Rufous and Calliope hummingbirds show up. Alongside rivers, in the so-called riparian areas, is the place to find birds. The riparian areas along the Rio Grande include cottonwoods, willows, box elders, canyon grape, apache plume, and the invasive russian olive.
