Hi Tweets,



I've witnessed a male yellowthroat do a dance of sorts once, probably not the same dance as Burt observed, but it was odd in any case. We were monitoring their nesting activity in northern Nebraska up in the Sandhills, along the Niobrara River - a great float if you ever get there. Got a big soft spot for these lil' tough attitude warblers. Pretty darn funny birds.

This area was right at the 100th meridian, with mostly both the nominate trichas and the western interior campicola, but also occidentalis in limited spots. In that area, with a few races apparent, there was quite a bit of variation in plumage; some fit the mold of a given subspecies, some didn't match any of what is supposed to be "normal". Some were more drabby, washed out and not showing much yellow; some were much more bright or crisp in markings. That area is an intergrade zone for many species, so variability makes sense - lots of mutts; but yellowthroats are documented as variable throughout their range and within various subspecies. Maybe the female witnessed was just a bit odd compared to her local clan - but hey, odd is good!

The bird went up and down about a 5-inch area of a diagonally oriented branch of a shrub (prairie plum) that had a thicket of grasses and sedges around the lower third of the bush. As he went up and down the interior branch of this bush, he kind of "shivered", held his wings out away from his body - maybe at about "1/4 mast", and wiggled his tail a small bit. Then, all in the same second, as I was perplexed by this little show, I looked over to left of the bird and saw the nest in amongst the grasses but supported by the shrub. He continued this dance until I backed away - which was quickly as I had not expected a nest in that particular bush. It was all a mistake and serendipitous at once. It lasted all of 3 seconds total, likely. Luckily, the nest did not fail.

Never saw this behavior in any of the other 20 some odd nests we followed, but this particular experience unfortunately seemed like a distraction display to me...sort of a "hey I am here - you don't see those eggs and nest over there - pay no attention to that buddy". They are very sensitive near their nests - we largely used behavioral observations from a distance as an index of nest productivity rather than keep hard tabs on eggs, young, etc. due to their agitation with yahoos near their nests. We also wanted to avoid pointing nest sites out to leering corvids and other nest raiders by limiting presence, observations and activities around immediate areas of nests - if at all.

A perplexing behavior. No food (or young to feed at that point) in the mouth of this bird, likely an unrelated jig. It is pretty neat that various strange dance behaviors have been seen in these birds, at different periods of nesting and different scenarios... reiterates that we still have much to learn about these and other neotrops.

Here's to watching our avian buds who continue to make us scratch our heads-

Cheers,

Chris Anderson
North Seattle
cdanders AT hotmail DOT com






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