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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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Scope of Work This blog post investigates the nagging notion that warblers of the Old World are drab and boring interesting on multiple levels especially to the extreme bird enthusiast while North American wood-warblers are nothing but beautiful and magical. I have tried to go beyond the emotional perception and actually analyse the colours on [...]

North Americans are so enamored with wood warblers that we often forget that folks in most countries don’t get to see these exquisite insectivores. Even less forgivable is that we often forget that folks in many other countries in what is considered the New World actually DO get to see warblers, in some cases with great [...]

New York City offers the best wood-warbler watching of any city in the United States or Canada.  Sure, Chicago has a magic hedge, Boston has a cemetery, and other cities must, on occasion, attract some Parulidae, but none can even compare to the marvel that is migration in The Big Apple.  Attention is often and [...]

TECPAN, GUATEMALA FEBRUARY 2009 – Surprisingly for a country with over 720 bird species on its list, Guatemala doesn’t have any species to call its very own, unless you consider Goldman’s Warbler a full-fledged species. Endemic, however, may be in the eye of the beholder. The Endemic Bird Area (EBA) BirdLife International has designated North [...]