Horned Grebe

Birders on the east and west coasts of North America typically experience the Horned Grebe as a small gray and white bird bobbing in the winter ocean waves too far from shore to see well. Birders in the Canadian prairies and farther north see it in breeding plumage, when it is one of the handsomest creatures to inhabit the marshy ponds and sloughs during summer. Birders inbetween these regions, meaning most of the interior US and Canada, are fortunate to see these 14-inch fish-eating diving birds related to loons as they pass through on migration. By mid-April they reach Wisconsin already transitioned into their distinctivebrown, rust, black, and orange breeding plumage, looking nothing like they do in December. Males and females look alike. This individual was photographed in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

The yellow-rumped warbler is usually the first of its clan to appear in the northern US and Canada from its wintering grounds in southern North America, arriving in the boreal forests where it nests in April and May. The "myrtle' form that occurs in the east has a white throat. The 'Audubon' form having a yellow throat prevails west of the Rockies. The pictured 'myrtle' warblers are both males, the upper one an early April arriver sitting on a broken cattail stalk and the lower one in a forsythia bush a bit later in the spring. photos taken in Middleton, Wisconsin.