Prothonotary Warblers NESTING in Rhode Island, June 2012

One the first e-mails I look for each evening is the daily summary of Rhode Island sightings prepared by Rachel Farrell.  One of these summaries mentioned a Prothonotary Warbler at Tillinghast Pond Wildlife Area in West Greenwich, specifically along the Pond Trail.  A little bit of on-line research yielded an excellent trail map, which showed that the Pond Trail skirted the entire perimeter of the pond, and was over 2 miles long.  Without some better directions, that could make for a tough search.  So I sent an e-mail to the birder who posted the sighting, and he sent back some excellent directions to get to an observation platform in the northeast part of the pond.  Plus he mentioned that it was a singing male that he had seen. 

Two days later I arrived at Tillinghast Pond for an early morning search for the Prothonotary.  Before I had arrived at the observation platform I heard what I thought was the bird.  But the song wasn’t quite right – although it had 4 or 5 loud clear notes on the same pitch typical of Prothonotary, it ended with 2 or 3 more notes on a lower pitch, a bit reminiscent of Chestnut-sided.  So I wrote it off as an abberant Chestnut-sided and kept going around the pond to the observation platform where the bird had been located.  I arrived at the designated spot and waited for a couple minutes.  Then I started hearing that same bird I heard before, and I realized that it was indeed coming from the same location where it had been seen earlier in the week.  But it was till singing that odd song.  So I waited to get a visual, and eventually I got good views of a singing male Prothonotary.  I followed it as it flew into a maple tree and then noticed there was a second bird the tree with it – a female Prothonotary!  I watched the female for a short time until it went to the edge of a tree cavity and then dropped into it out of sight.  I waited for more than 10 minutes but the bird did not reappear.  So it had to be incubating eggs!  I later found out that this was only the second confirmed nesting of Prothonotary Warbler in Rhode Island.

My statebird map for Prothonotary Warbler is inserted below.  I’ve seen it in most of the states in its typical southeastern range.  And in some of the states that look to be outside the normal range, like KS, OK, MN, and MI, I’ve seen this species at the southern or eastern edge of the state.  So it’s a bit misleading to color in the entire state in those cases.  And now I’ve seen Prothonotary in 3 New England states.  There were quite a number of Prothonotarys seen throughout New England this spring, but unfortunately I couldn’t get out to look for any of the others (including a chasable one on the Maine coast).  Finding a nesting pair in RI makes up for it a bit.