{"id":283,"date":"2010-06-26T11:52:47","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/?p=283"},"modified":"2010-06-26T11:59:35","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T15:59:35","slug":"blue-winged-warblers-golden-winged-warblers-and-brewsters-warbler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2010\/06\/26\/blue-winged-warblers-golden-winged-warblers-and-brewsters-warbler\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue-winged Warblers, Golden-winged Warblers and Brewster’s Warblers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The warbler species in the genus Vermivora<\/em> are small birds (four to four and a half inches long) with sharp, thin, pointed bills.\u00a0\u00a0 The bill is a great tool for capturing small insects, spiders and other invertebrates.\u00a0 Vermivora<\/em> means worm-eater, hardly an appropriate name for these birds unless one interprets worm to mean caterpillar.<\/p>\n

Two species in the genus nest regularly in Maine.\u00a0 Nashville Warblers occur throughout the state in the summer, nesting in second-growth or scrubby woodlands.\u00a0 The margins of the many bogs we have in Maine provide great habitat for these birds.\u00a0 Tennessee Warblers are much more common in the northern half of Maine.\u00a0 These birds are residents of spruce-fir forests.\u00a0 Tennessee Warblers depend on spruce budworms to feed themselves and their nestlings.<\/p>\n

Blue-winged Warblers have nested sporadically in extreme southern Maine.\u00a0 In the past few years, this species has been seen north of Portland during the breeding season.\u00a0\u00a0 This spring, Blue-winged Warblers seem more widespread than ever.\u00a0 We may well be seeing the vanguard of a wave of this species expanding their breeding range north.<\/p>\n

Blue-winged Warblers are gorgeous birds.\u00a0 Males are yellow underneath except for white undertail coverts.\u00a0 The head is yellow as well with a think black line through the eye.\u00a0 The back is greenish-yellow and the wings are blue-gray with two prominent white wing bars.\u00a0 Females are similar with the yellow on the head restricted to the forehead and with less prominent eyelines and wingbars than the males.<\/p>\n

Alexander Wilson, the Scottish immigrant, covered the species in his American Ornithology, the first publication on the birds of North America.\u00a0 The species was called the Blue-winged Yellow Warbler at that time and had been erroneously confused with the Pine Warbler until Wilson figured out two species were involved.<\/p>\n

Blue-winged Warblers prefer over-grown old field and brushy habitats for nesting.\u00a0 They occur in patchy fashion from Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota eastward from New Jersey to New Hampshire on the eastern seaboard.<\/p>\n

Before Europeans colonized the eastern United States, Blue-winged Warblers migrated to Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky to nest.\u00a0 As forests were cleared throughout the east, the Blue-winged Warblers expanded their range because favorable habitat was being created.\u00a0 The species had reached northern Ohio by 1900.\u00a0 Blue-wings were quite rare in Massachusetts in 1924 but now are found nesting widely across that state.<\/p>\n

With the reversion of agricultural fields to forests and destruction of habitat for buildings, the amount of shrublands is decreasing, particularly in the northeastern United States.\u00a0 As a result, Blue-winged Warbler population numbers are down in some parts of their range.<\/p>\n

The incursion of Blue-winged Warblers into Maine may simply be a continuation of the range expansion that has been going on for over 200 years.\u00a0 Warming of the climate and destruction of nesting habitat in southern New England may also be contributing to this apparent increase in Blue-winged Warblers in our state.<\/p>\n

Blue-winged Warbler males have a distinctive, buzzy song consisting of two parts.\u00a0 It is often described as \u201cbeee-buzzz\u201d.\u00a0 You can hear a recording at http:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org<\/a><\/p>\n

A closely related species to the Blue-wing is the Golden-winged Warbler.\u00a0 Golden-wings occur rarely as migrants in Maine.\u00a0 The two species overlap over much of their range.\u00a0 Golden-winged Warblers have a yellow cap, a black throat, a broad, black mask on the sides of the face, and yellow wing bars.\u00a0 Their song consists of four buzzy parts: zee zaa-zaa-zaa.<\/p>\n

Blue-winged Warblers and Golden-winged Warblers occasionally interbreed to yield fertile hybrids.\u00a0 \u00a0Some early ornithologists collected some of these hybrids and described them as new species.\u00a0 It took some genetics sleuth work to determine the true hybrid nature of these birds.<\/p>\n

The most commonly encountered hybrid is called Brewster\u2019s Warbler, the product of a first-generation cross between a \"\"<\/a>Blue-wing and a Golden-wing.\u00a0 The Brewster\u2019s Warbler has the white underparts of a Golden-winged Warbler and often yellow wing bars but the black eyeline of the Blue-winged Warbler.\u00a0 A Brewster\u2019s Warbler was recently found by Becky Marvil (who provided the photograph), Marie Jordan and friends in Saco.<\/p>\n

Now, it gets more complicated.\u00a0 A Brewster\u2019s Warbler may breed with either a Golden-winged Warbler or a Blue-winged Warbler.\u00a0 A geneticist calls such a mating a backcross.\u00a0 The offspring of the backcrosses fall along a continuum of Golden-wing and Blue-wing traits.\u00a0 One variant, the Lawrence\u2019s Warbler (also thought originally to be a new species) has the yellow underparts of a Blue-winged Warbler and the head pattern (bold black mask and black throat) of a Golden-winged Warbler.<\/p>\n

The genetics of this system were worked out by Kenn Parkes in 1951.\u00a0 You can download a copy of his paper (with paintings of different hybrids) here: Parkes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Originally published on May 29, 2010)<\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The warbler species in the genus Vermivora are small birds (four to four and a half inches long) with sharp, thin, pointed bills.\u00a0\u00a0 The bill is a great tool for capturing small insects, spiders and other invertebrates.\u00a0 Vermivora means worm-eater, hardly an appropriate name for these birds unless one interprets worm to mean caterpillar. Two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}