Plate 138 – Connecticut Warbler

John James Audubon spent much of the spring of 1829 searching for and documenting birds along the shores of New Jersey (see Plate 118) and in the mountains of Pennsylvania (see Plate 88). While hunting and watching birds near Camden along the Delaware River, Audubon felled the only Connecticut warblers he saw in his lifetime. The birds were flying and “chasing a species of spider which runs nimbly over the water.” As soon as the birds alighted on the branches of a Soapwort gentian (Gentiana saponaria), they became specimens that Audubon was able to use to produce his drawing for Birds of America. Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) was the first to document the bird and, like he did with many other birds, named the bird based on where it was first procured and identified for science. The Connecticut warbler visits a vast number of other places as a part of its migration between Canada and the tropics, such as the Solon Springs near Douglas, Wisconsin. 41 Connecticut warblers have been counted at Solon Springs, the most anywhere in North America according to Cornell’s e-Bird system (see eBird Checklist S15055932).