Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This lovely little warbler is a voracious predator of spruce budworms. One study concluded that they consumed over 13,000 budworms per hectare (about 2.5 acres) in just 41 days. The density of nesting Bay-breasted Warblers during outbreaks of spruce budworm was very high in historical times. One Ontario study in 1946 found as many as 230 pairs in just 247 acres.

To hear the high-frequency songs and calls of this or any other species with high-pitched vocalizations, even with my hearing aids, and to get a direction for them, I use Lang Elliott’s “Hear Birds Again”. The app is free to download, and the website has clear and easy directions to make the fairly inexpensive binaural headphones. To know if the bird is there in the first place, I use the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin app.