Chestnut-sided Warbler Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This series is dedicated to Vermont's nesting wood warblers, a
family of small North American songbirds, many of whom sport bright
colors and sing songs that can be learned with patience and
practice. They return from their wintering grounds just as the
leaves—and insects—begin to come out.
Chestnut-sided
Warblers thrive where people do because they are attracted to
edges. They thrive where one habitat meets another, like where
woods turn to open fields or where brushy fields bump up against
streams. People make edges all the time in the course of using the
land for their own purposes and this warbler entirely approves.
They must be far more common now than when human population
densities were low and the forest nearly continuous. European
settlers semi-permanently cleared large tracts of forest and
created habitat for the Chestnut-sided Warbler.
Unlike the warblers, the Abenaki people did not thrive as a result
of the land-use changes that were introduced by the newcomers who,
at first, called this area New Connecticut. Even more disastrous
was the Europeans' enlistment of Native Americans in their wars and
their notion of exclusive land ownership.
They have a cap that seems yellow in some lighting conditions, lime
green in others. For some birds, it is hard to understand why they
are named as they are (Red-bellied Woodpeckers don’t have
obviously red bellies, for example), but the chestnut stripe on the
side of these little fellows is unmistakable. Their song is usually
rendered as, “Pleased, pleased, pleased to meet cha,”
or “Tease, tease, tease, Miss Beecher.” Later in the
season, they abbreviate the song to something that sounds ominously
like, “Switch you!” in a rather disapproving
voice.
Abundance and habitat data are from Birdwatching in Vermont
by Ted Murin and Bryan Pfeiffer.
Co-FTF honors to RSAKVT and kachingkt.
Additional Hints
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