January's Warblers

Birding for wood-warblers is a tedious task.  There are small birds, between 4 -6” in length, very active, and tend to forage high up in trees. The constant looking up normally leaves you with neck pains, a condition known in birding circles as Warbler Neck.  To add to the pain(😂), for an island like Barbados, which is not in the range of many of these families of birds, the rewards, in terms of numbers seen, are not too high.  In January 2022 though we saw species of warblers we don’t commonly see on the island.  I am not sure if this was caused by some atmospheric anomaly, or because we, the birders, just spent more time looking for these birds, in habitats where there are known to frequent, like Turners Hall Woods, Graeme Hall Swamps, etc of both.  Whatever the reason, it was exciting to see these rare warblers.  Here are the warblers recorded from our native species to the much rarer ones.

Native warbler 

Golden Warbler, the local subspecies of the Yellow warbler

 

Yearly Wintering Resident

Northern Waterthrush

American Redstart

Yellow Warbler (North America sub species ) migratory 

Rare Migrants 

Northern Parula 

Cape May Warbler

Magnolia Warbler