Wilson’s Warbler Photo Credit: Sue Orwig

** Nature Nugget**

The Pacific Flyway is one of North America’s four main migration routes for birds, it extends from Alaska and Canada, through California, to Mexico and South America and stretches from the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific Ocean. Birds follow ancestral patterns along this route as they travel the flyway on their annual north-south migration, which is over 4,000 miles long and, in places, over 1,000 miles wide.

Each year at least a billion birds migrate along the Pacific Flyway, including more than 350 bird species, and this time of year the Pacific Flyway is rockin’!!

As the largest estuary (tidal mouth of a large river) on the Pacific coasts of both North and South America, the San Francisco Bay is a critically important stopover for birds moving along the Pacific Flyway. The Bay offers an abundance, and diversity of habitat for a great number of migrant birds. Here on the peninsula, we are lucky to view a great number of these birds, whether they winter here, stay for the late spring/summer, or just stop in on their way through.

Some birds to pay particular attention to right here on the coast are the Warblers. In April to May, the Townsend’s and Yellow-rumped Warblers, who you may have seen cross your path or in your backyard from August/ September are leaving to head to their northern summer breeding grounds for a few months. In exchange, from April to September, we get our opportunity to see another beautiful yellow colored Warbler the Wilson’s Warbler.

Check out this link to Cornell Lab’s “All About Birds” to learn a little bit about each of these (and other) Warblers and hear their songs: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse/shape/Warblers