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Cerulean Warbler | Setophaga cerulea
Azuurzanger | Reinita cerúlea
The Cerulean Warbler is a small warbler of the high canopy. It breeds in deciduous forest in eastern North America and winters in the Andes of South America. In the Caribbean it appears mainly in autumn, when some birds cross the Caribbean Sea via Florida and Cuba; in spring most follow the route through Central America. The species has declined steeply.
Voice
The call is a short, dry chip; in flight a buzzy zzee. The song, rarely heard on the islands, is a series of buzzy notes that accelerates and ends in a high trill: zree zree zree zrrrree.
Recording: Matt Wistrand — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, compact, with a short tail. The male is sky blue above, with black streaks on the back, two white wing bars, a white throat and belly, a narrow dark breast band and blue-grey streaks along the flanks. The female is blue-green above, with a pale supercilium, two white wing bars and off-white to yellowish underparts with faint flank streaks. Young birds in autumn are greener and yellower but also show the pale supercilium and wing bars. Both sexes have white tail spots.
Confusion species
Male Black-throated Blue Warbler Setophaga caerulescens is darker blue, with a black throat and flanks and no wing bars. Northern Parula Setophaga americana has a yellow throat and breast, a green back patch and white eye-arcs. Females and young birds can resemble Blackpoll Warbler Setophaga striata and Tennessee Warbler Leiothlypis peregrina, but the blue-green tone of the head and back and the short tail are distinctive.
Habitat
On passage in the canopy of any type of forest, also in tall trees in coastal woodland, parks and gardens; often with mixed flocks of other warblers. It forages high in the canopy. In South America it winters in moist montane forest at middle elevations.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
A rare passage migrant in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, mainly in autumn. Elsewhere a vagrant, with scattered records from Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago. Breeds in the eastern United States and extreme south-eastern Canada; winters in the Andes from Colombia and Venezuela to Peru and Bolivia.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chance is in autumn on Cuba and the Bahamas, in tall trees with mixed flocks of migrant warblers. Often only the white underside with the narrow breast band and flank streaks is visible from below.
Conservation status
Near Threatened according to the IUCN; the population is declining. Breeding-ground surveys showed that by 2006 it had fallen to less than a fifth of its level forty years earlier. Causes are loss and fragmentation of deciduous forest on the breeding grounds, including through mining in the Appalachians, and conversion of montane forest to farmland in the Andes.
Scientific name
Setophaga cerulea | (Wilson, 1810)
Wilson described the species in 1810 as Sylvia cerulea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Setophaga was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Setophaga is Greek, from sēs, sētos 'moth' and -phagos '-eating': 'moth-eater'. cerulea is Latin, from caeruleus 'sky-blue', after the male's blue upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.