Warblers- ORDER: Passeriformes
- FAMILY: Parulidae
Basic Description
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.
More ID InfoFind This Bird
Home in on MacGillivray’s Warblers by listening for them in spring and early summer, when males sing loudly in the early morning. Some sing from open perches, but many sing from inside thick cover, where they are more difficult to spot. Sometimes squeaking or making pishing sounds will bring one into view. When this species is not singing, listen for its sharp, distinctive call note.
Other Names
- Reinita de Tolmie (Spanish)
- Paruline des buissons (French)
- Cool Facts
- 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.