BirdNote; Chestnuts and Warblers

BirdNote®

Chestnuts and Warblers

Written by Rick Wright

This is BirdNote.

[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190 throughout]

Unlike some of its relatives, the buzzy-voiced Golden-winged Warbler steers clear of dense forests, gravitating instead toward thickets beneath an open sky.

In a bitter irony, a hundred years ago the Golden-winged Warbler enjoyed a high point in its population history — thanks to the devastation of another species.

[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190]

The chestnut blight arrived in the United States in 1904, and by 1940 most mature chestnut trees had been wiped out by the disease. The loss was especially vast in the Appalachians, where the American chestnut made up a quarter of the entire forest canopy.

The sudden death of all those forest giants created sunny openings for brambles and grape thickets to take hold — perfect nesting sites for Golden-winged Warblers.

Today, the bird’s habitat is under threat as reforestation and development replace thickets. In the easternmost parts of its shrinking range, the tiny warbler has been relegated to stretches of underbrush that often sprout up around poorly maintained power lines and other forgotten areas.

[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.

###

Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190, recorded by Wil Hershberger.

Producer: John Kessler

Production Manager: Allison Wilson

Editor: Ashley Ahearn

Producer: Mark Bramhill

Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone

BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

© 2020 BirdNote September 2020 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#: GWWA-01-2020-09-08 GWWA-01