Has their ever been a time when you were outside early in the morning in spring or fall and seen branches moving five to ten feet off the ground? My guess is that it’s an American Redstart. American Redstarts are one of the most common warblers in spring and fall migration. If you don’t know what migration is, well I’ll tell you what migration is. Migration is when animals as varied as elk, bats, and monarch butterflies move either north in spring or south in fall.
Redstarts are small birds around four inches long and are very noisy. In spring their song is a quite clear ‘see-see-see-see-see-see-sweet’, and in fall a series of short chips that sound like ‘tsip’. Redstarts breed from southeastern Alaska to Newfoundland and in Oregon, Colorado, Oklahoma, to very northern Louisiana and in some parts of the Carolinas. Redstarts spend their winters south of here in southern Florida, sometimes California, and areas in Mexico, Central America, Northern Columbia,Venezuela, and Ecuador.
Redstarts are very active little warblers. The males have black upperparts and hood, orange patches on wings and side, long fan like tail and white underparts. Females have olive grayish upperparts, yellow patches on the sides and a big tail like the males but they are smaller overall. I would recommend looking for them in any place that has a lot of trees, especially Montrose Point bird sanctuary, and around Chicago’s lakefront parks.
