MacGillivray’s Warbler Gallery
Geothlypis tolmiei
eBird gives this description for the MacGillivray’s Warbler: Chunky, skulking warbler that favors dense undergrowth. Yellow with blue-gray head and chest. Blacker lores set off distinctive white arcs above and below eye. Olive-green above and yellow belly. Bright pink legs. Adult males show most contrasting plumage. Females and immatures duller but with same pattern. Found in thickets, clearcuts, clearings in mixed forests, and riparian zones. Similar to Mourning Warbler, but little range overlap during breeding season and migraton, and note longer tail and white eye-arcs. All About Birds adds this descriptive information about the MacGillvray’s Warbler: A furtive songbird of dense brush, MacGillivray’s Warbler is an elegant yellow and gray amid green leaves. Males have a sooty gray hood highlighted with striking white crescents above and below the eye. Don’t look for this species in open forests, but look for it instead in almost any sort of dense thicket, shrubbery, willows, or low tangles along wooded streams. In these areas it forages inside the vegetation, gleaning insects from foliage and from the ground.
I watched and photographed several MacGillivray’s Warblers during my visit to Christmas Mountains Oasis on August 31, 2020. These birds were a delight to watch!
“Cool Facts” about the MacGillivray’s Warbler from All About Birds…
- The ranges of MacGillivray’s Warbler and the closely related Mourning Warbler come together in a small part of the Peace region of British Columbia, Canada, and they sometimes form hybrids there.
- MacGillivray’s Warblers nest from near sea level to as high as 10,000 feet in elevation.
- MacGillivray’s Warbler was named by John James Audubon for his friend and editor, William MacGillivray, a Scottish naturalist. Audubon coined this name even though John Kirk Townsend had already named the species Tolmie’s Warbler, in honor of surgeon William Fraser Tolmie, who had a long career as fur trader, politician, and scientist.
- The oldest recorded MacGillivray’s Warbler was a male at least 4 years, 1 month old when it was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Oregon.