a magnolia that's not Southern

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A rather haughty
Alexander Wilson

Magnolia warblers are another oddly named species. With an appellation like Magnolia, you'd expect them to be rooted in the Old South, land of live oaks and Spanish moss; red clay and cotton; creasy greens and collards, but actually they spend their winters in the Caribbean and Central America and their summers in New England and Northern Canada. That is where they raise their families, most often in dense stands of conifers. (Spruce warbler would have probably been a better name.)

They do migrate through the environs of See Rock City barns twice a year, but their time here is brief, like a mote of dust floating through a sunbeam. Seeing one is memorable; the males are especially striking. Their songs on the other hand are weak and wispy, often I'm sure I do not even hear them. The mnemonic to remember their song is "weta, weta, weta, WETA" but that really should be written "weta, weta, weta, WETA."

And the odd name? We can blame the so-called Father of American Ornithology, Alexander Wilson himself. He shot one in a magnolia tree in Mississippi in the early 1800s and named it after its last known address.

I guess we are lucky it wasn't standing on the top of one of our fine old southern 19th century outhouses, or the name might have been something completely different.

Eliot phoned again the other night to let me know she had seen her first male Magnolia in the trees around their apartment and was quite pleased she knew what it was. "It looked like happiness," she said.


Here's another excellent video by Garth McElroy that shows happiness passerinified:

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