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Wood-Warbler Week is finally over for 2011.  Will it come back in 2012?  We’ll see… But there is one more thing to do for Wood-Warbler Week, and that is to figure out what wood-warbler is represented in the Wood-Warbler Week logo, which was created by my wonderful sister-in-law, Stephanie Chung.  Below is the logo.  What [...]

It really has been great to see such beautiful pictures of wood-warblers all week, especially when it has been so long since we saw any in the USA. It made us reach for our field guide for North America, but that really does not compare to the real thing. I had spent several holidays with [...]

But only until 1 PM tomorrow so we can cram two more posts into what has been an exciting and wonderful week.  If you have missed any posts just click here to see the entire Wood-Warbler Week archive!

This is, simply enough, a gallery of wood-warblers that have cooperated and stayed still long enough for pictures to be taken this spring.  Some of these shots are not the most gorgeous of images but they were all taken this spring, which means that sometimes I had to take what I could get.  Wood-warbler photography [...]

It has been an interesting experience to visit two destinations on the east coast and compare the advance of spring from one to another. Washington DC was sunny, warm and flushed with green on Easter Sunday. 48 hours later however, Boston, Mass., was gloomy, chilly and the trees were still bare. Early leafers like the [...]

In this post, we shall celebrate the beauty and variation of a veritable wood-warbler whose taxonomic inclusion into this glamorous group has been overlooked far too long, whose charisma has thus tragically and largely gone unnoticed and whose beauty has been severely under…   mis…   err …  [coughs] estimated wrongly until very recently. Ladies and Gentlemen, [...]

Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you know that this is Wood Warbler Week at 10,000 Birds. To us living here in Europe, that’s Sylvia Warblers. And boy do we got ‘em here in Cyprus. Except here they’re killed and eaten as a “delicacy.” Not cool. Because of this, I actually thought of calling my [...]

I first met Jacob Drucker within a month of my moving to New York City.  He was with a group of young naturalists pulling invasive plants out of Forest Park.  Since then I have only been able to stand back and watch in awe as he has become an amazingly good birder, with the advantage [...]

Lloyd Spitalnik is a well-known New York City based birder and an exceedingly accomplished bird photographer. His work has appeared in such publications as Audubon, Natural History, Birder’s World, Wildbird, Birding, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and WWF Songbird calendars.  Lloyd is one of three men responsible for the annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird [...]

“Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat.” [old German proverb] “Kommt Zeit, kommt Art.” [old Jochen birding proverb] May 2005 was a very good month for me. Why? Oh, because I got to spent the entire month birding around the Great Lakes, and how cool is that!? May + Birder from Overseas + time to bird = birding frenzy at [...]

GLEN ROSE, TX,  MARCH 2007 – The Golden-cheeked Warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) is one of the United States less accessible avian species. The golden-cheek closely resembles its cousin, the Black-throated Green Warbler, but its coloration is high contrast black, white, and brilliant yellow. This lovely little wood warbler winters in Mexico and Central America, migrating only [...]

Let your mind’s eye sweep over the rich expanse of the avian family tree. Revel in its deep, gnarly divisions, its long, slender shoots. You’ll come to a profusion of branches and twigs — the songbirds, or passerines — and if you look closer still, a colorful cloud of myriad forms, the nine-primaried cardinals, tanagers, [...]

Like many birds in these days of rampant development, overconsumption, population growth, and global warming, the Cerulean Warbler faces a host of threats to its survival as a species.  BirdLife International lists the Cerulean Warbler as Vulnerable because of “a large and statistically significant decrease over the last 40 years in North America” that is equivalent to [...]

The Audubon’s Warbler (Dendroica coronata auduboni) is the western edition of the Yellow-rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata).  The Myrtle Warbler (Dendroica coronata coronata), the eastern subspecies, and Audubon’s Warblers hybridize in the southern Canadian Rockies and on the basis of this evidence, as well as genetic similarities, these two species were combined into a single species in 1973 by [...]

This week’s quiz was the most diabolical quiz I have written and it was answered in no time at all.  Congratulations to Sarah T ! [I had a girlfriend named Sarah T. many years ago who was a birder.  Could it be?  No, it couldn’t be.] BAHAMA YELLOWTHROAT it is!  Sarah T – How did [...]

My first exposure to the beautiful birds known as wood-warblers was on a small group of islands on the edge of the world (almost). The Farallon Islands, twenty five miles off the coast of San Francisco, are perhaps best known not for birds, instead for the population of Great White Sharks which come to feed [...]

So this is it, wood-warbler week. An online even that’s meant to celebrate the stunning spring migration of one of the world’s most colourful bird groups to also occur outside of the tropics. Largely restricted to the eastern half of North America, the season is often referred to as May-hem and deemed one of the 7 wonders of the bird [...]

Pleased pleased pleased to meet ya! Pleased pleased pleased to meet ya! Pleased pleased pleased to meet ya! The Chestnut-sided Warbler is one friendly little bird, constantly exclaiming how excited he is to make your acquaintance.  And it is the cold-hearted birder who does not feel the same about the yellow-capped, black-masked, chestnut-sided bundle of [...]

1. As I have explained at length in my last 10,000 Birds blog post, wood warblers are nondescript little birds, formally known by the binomial Phylloscopus sibilatrix. Being an identity thief just does not win friends in honest birding circles. As soon as those smart scientist types see the error in their ways, they will [...]

Rightly or wrongly, there’s an hierarchy of extinct birds in North America, in the United States in particular.  Each offers a portrait of a nation at a crossroads, a series of Aesop’s Fables for a nascent environmental movement whose themes become more or less relevant in the public mindset depending on what issues need to [...]