Chestnut-sided Warbler Gallery
Setophaga pensylvanica
eBird offers this description of the Chestnut-sided Warbler: Breeding birds show yellow cap, black triangle under eye, streaked back and reddish-brown sides. Looks remarkably different in fall with distinctive lime green above and gray below with bold white eyering. Breeds mainly in secondary forests, especially areas with large shrubs and young trees. Does well in disturbed habitats, particularly power line cuts and areas that have been logged. Forages for insects. Winters in Central America. All About Birds gives this additional descriptive information about the Chestnut-sided Warbler: The crisply plumaged Chestnut-sided Warbler is not your average warbler of the deep forest. These slender, yellow-capped and chestnut-flanked songsters thrive in young, regrowing forests, thickets, and other disturbed areas. Look for them foraging among the fine branches of slender saplings, tail cocked, and listen for males singing an excitable pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha! In fall, this bird molts into lime-green and grayish white plumage with a distinctive white eyering, and heads to thickets, shade-coffee plantations, and second growth forest in Central America.
I watched and photographed my first Chestnut-sided Warbler on May 15, 2020 at Warbler Woods Bird Sanctuary. A couple of these beautiful birds made a brief appearance at Warbler Pond. I am so glad I was there to greet them!
“Cool Facts” about the Chestnut-sided Warbler from All About Birds…
- In 2018, a beautiful but puzzling hybrid warbler turned up in Pennsylvania. After much observation and study, Cornell Lab researcher David Toews and colleagues determined it was the first known “triple hybrid” warbler: the offspring of a male Chestnut-sided Warbler and a female “Brewster’s Warbler,” which is itself a hybrid of Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers. Toews christened the individual “Burket’s Warbler,” in honor of the citizen scientist who documented it carefully on his family property.
- On the wintering grounds in Central America the Chestnut-sided Warbler joins in mixed-species foraging flocks with the resident antwrens and tropical warblers. Individual warblers return to the same areas year after year, joining back up with the same foraging flock it associated with the year before.
- The Chestnut-sided Warbler sings two basic songs: one is accented at the end (the pleased-to-meetcha song), and the other is not. Males sing the accented songs primarily to attract a female; once nesting is well underway they switch over to the unaccented songs, which are used mostly in territory defense and aggressive encounters with other males. Some males sing only unaccented songs, and they are less successful at securing mates than males that sing both songs.
- The oldest recorded Chestnut-sided Warbler was at least 6 years, 11 months old when it was found in Rhode Island in 1980. It had been banded in the same state in 1973.