On my third visit of the season to central Lake County (Cat Lake area) on July
8-9 I found five more singing black-throated blue warblers, as well as a pair
feeding a fledgling, for a total of 13 singing males in three visits. While their
numbers seem to have been gradually increasing away from the North Shore
for some time (witness Minnesota Biological Survey
results:http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/eco/mcbs/birdmaps/black_throated_blue_w
arbler_map.pdf), they seem to have really jumped this summer. Someone who
lives on the Shore mentioned she'd noticed a general lack of breeding birds this
season, perhaps because of consecutive cold springs, which led us to
speculate BTBWs may be "packing" into central Lake County, rather than
attempting breeding in their more traditional North Shore spots. Has anyone
visited places like Oberg Mountain or Tettegouche SP this summer and noted
numbers of BTBWs as a way to test this hypothesis?
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