Just three days after a mother-son team spotted a hooded oriole in Juneau, two National Park Service interpreters spotted a yellow-throated warbler outside their offices in Bartlett Cove. It\u2019s the first time the bird has been seen in Alaska. <\/p>\n
Steve Schaller said he and Emma Johnson spotted the bird Sept. 22. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first spotted it, it sort of looked like a yellow-rumped warbler, but then we started to notice its behavior was different, and it had a longer beak,\u201d Schaller said. \u201cWe started realizing that this was something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, the bird is feeding on insects, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s coming up to the windows on the sides of the building, nabbing spiders and other insects,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He said the bird also seems \u201cpretty used to people\u201d and sits comfortably in spruce tree outside their offices.<\/p>\n
Typical habitat range for this species is in the southeast portion of North America, with summer ranges drifting up into areas of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Winter ranges typically go as far south as Cuba and the Dominican Republic \u2014 so its arrival in Bartlett Cove is notable. <\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s more typical to have birds leaving Alaska in the fall, it\u2019s not strange that an unusual bird would show up this time of year, said Audubon Alaska Executive Director Nils Warnock. <\/p>\n
Migration periods \u2014 spring and summer \u2014 is when unusual birds tend to show up. <\/p>\n
What is unusual about the birds \u2014 besides their species \u2014 is that both appear to be adults. <\/p>\n
\u201cVagrants are often young birds,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes, they do 180 reversals (of their normal direction.)\u201d<\/p>\n
Some people, he said, theorize that the wayward juvenile birds are dyslexic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut given that these are likely adults, that does make it more unusual,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Weather and storm patterns can also influence vagrant birds, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of strange weather lately, especially the big blob (a big patch of warm water in the Gulf of Alaska).\u201d All these factors can influence bird migration, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey follow wind currents, and end up in out-of-the-way places,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Generally, new birds tend to come from Asia. Given that these birds normally live in the Lower 48, he said it makes sense their first-time Alaska sighting would be in Southeast.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is we can speculate all we want about it, but we don\u2019t really know for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cIs it just a coincidence we had two new \u2026 state records at the same time? It might be. But it also might suggest something with the weather patterns has pushed the birds farther north than normal.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBirds are cool,\u201d Warnock said. \u201cWe (birders) love this stuff. There\u2019s something about it, because we have such strong seasonality with our birds. There\u2019s something about seeing these vagrants that show up. It adds a special something.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Juneau Empire Outdoors writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@juneauempire.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just three days after a mother-son team spotted a hooded oriole in Juneau, two National Park Service interpreters spotted a yellow-throated warbler outside their offices in Bartlett Cove. It\u2019s the first time the bird has been seen in Alaska. Steve Schaller said he and Emma Johnson spotted the bird Sept. 22. \u201cWhen we first spotted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19243"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}