Monday 24 September 2012

[cobirds] Insect infestation and migrating warblers

I posted on Saturday about a feeding frenzy of warblers (Yellow-rumps and a few Orange-crowned and Wilson's and a Townsend's) that day.  I noticed that leaves on the cottonwood trees where they were feeding had several yelllowish blotches on them.  When I looked at the leaves closely it appeared that there were insect larvae inside the leaves.  On infested trees most of the leaves had blotches and many of the trees in the park were infested.  I have now uploaded photos of these leaves to my Birds and Nature blog plus one photo of a Townsend's Warbler that appeared to be gleaning larvae (or pupae?) from a leaf.  I did some research and found that leafminers can cause symptoms like this and think this may be the family of insects causing this infestation.  It certainly is a good source of food for hungry migrating warblers for which gleaning this larvae is compatible with their food habits as it seems to be for Townsend's as well as Yellow-rumped Warblers.

SeEtta Moss
Canon City
Blogging for Birds and Blooms magazine @ http://birdsandbloomsblog.com/author/seetta-moss/
Personal blog @ BirdsAndNature.blogspot.com

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