I've seen a feeding frenzy on the ocean, but this is an Illinois oak woods. On the ocean, big fish attack the school of little fish from the bottom, and birds attack from above. Now I'm watching a parallel on the edge of the oak woods that adjoins my back yard.
For a fifteen or twenty minutes, a horde of warblers and
gnatcatchers darted after bugs in one small area (a few feet in all dimensions), from every oak-flower, branch and leaf. Some insect was hatching there. Suddenly a
humming bird was in the thick of this frenzy. The
hummer darted – back and forth, up and down, a foot or two in each dart, multiple
darts per second – apparently catching small insects that the warblers had found and were
stirring up [photo by Lisa Culp]. The hummer acrobatics lasted for over a minute, which is time enough
for the hummer to catch dozens of tiny flying prey.
The marauding horde of warbler species this morning included:
Chestnut-sided warbler
Wilson’s warbler
Blue-winged warbler
Mourning warbler
Blackpoll
Redstart
Magnolia warbler
Nashville warbler
Gnatcatchers, warblers and a hummingbird. Little sharks of
the treetops.
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