We banded a immature, female Townsend’s Warbler on the afternoon of 25 August 2019. Not a too shappy looking fall bird, but the male is even more strikingly plumaged, with darker sides of the face, a dark throat, and more prominent side streaking—here is a link to one we saw in California on 28 March 2012. This warbler is a breeding bird of the Pacific Northwest, dropping south through the mountains of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Here along Puget Sound, this bird is a migrant. They winter along our Pacific Coast south through Mexico and well into Central America. Vagrants show up across eastern North America. This individual is only the third I have banded—the first in Arizona on 1 May 1970, and an unexpected one in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on 30 October 1992.
We had a solitary male Townsend's Warbler winter in our NE Seattle neighborhood for 4 years c2003-8. Not banded so I can't swear it was the same bird each year, but in 30 yrs at that house it was the only TW we ever saw. It frequently came in to the suet feeders in the company of a small group of Chestnut-backed Chickadees.
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