Warblers, according to one classic old bird book — 1897’s “Bird Neighbors” by Neltje Blanchan — are a family of birds characterized as “exceedingly active, graceful, restless feeders among the terminal twigs of trees and shrubbery” that are nonetheless “strangely unknown to all but devoted bird lovers.” This still rings true today: many a devoted bird lover seeks out warblers with an eagerness incomprehensible to the uninitiated, while the average human being lives in ignorance of these colorful co-residents of our world. Let’s try to bridge this gap a little.
A few basics: Warblers are small songbirds usually adorned with yellow plumage, sometimes all over, sometimes in sparser highlights. While many species have some level of “warbling” song, they are not in truth among the most spectacular singers of the avian world. Their “active” and “restless” nature points to their feeding style and therefore dietary preferences — warblers mostly eat bugs, which they pursue in trees, plucking them from twig tips and reaching under leaves.
This preference for insect food is suggestive of their general migratory tendency. Warblers are mostly what are known as “neotropical migrants,” with most species spending their winters in Mexico and Central America and only moving north to the United States and Canada for the summer breeding season. A few clarifications: First, while warblers are, across the continent, mostly birds of spring and summer, Californi.