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Worm-eating Warbler | Helmitheros vermivorum
Streepkopzanger | Reinita gusanera
The Worm-eating Warbler is a plain-coloured, fairly stocky wood-warbler with a striped head. It specialises in probing clusters of dead leaves caught in shrubs and low branches. Its name refers to the caterpillars it eats, not to earthworms.
Voice
The call is a sharp chip, also a thin zeet-zeet in flight. The song, given on the breeding grounds, is a dry, rattling trill on one pitch that resembles an insect.
Recording: Bobby Wilcox — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm, compact, with a fairly long, pointed bill and a short tail. Upperparts plain olive-grey. The head is warm buff with four black stripes: two broad crown stripes and two eye-stripes. Underparts plain pale buff, paler on the belly, without streaks or wing bars. Legs pink. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Swainson's Warbler Limnothlypis swainsonii has a plain rufous-brown crown without black stripes, a pale supercilium with a dark eye-stripe and nearly white underparts. Ovenbird Seiurus aurocapilla and the waterthrushes are streaked below. No other warbler in the region combines such a striped head with plain underparts.
Habitat
Moist and semi-evergreen broadleaf forest, limestone forest and montane forest with dense understorey, also dry forest and shade-coffee plantations. It forages in the lower and middle levels, clinging to dead leaves and prying them open with its bill in search of caterpillars, spiders and other invertebrates. It often joins mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
A fairly scarce winter visitor in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico; scarce in the Cayman Islands and the Virgin Islands. Rare to vagrant in the Lesser Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago and the ABC Islands. Breeds in the eastern United States and winters from southern Mexico to Panama and in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas.
- Resident
- 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
Best found in mixed flocks in moist forest in Jamaica, Cuba or Hispaniola, by watching for a bird that spends a long time working at a single hanging dead leaf. The striped head is then usually visible.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The population is fairly stable. Forest loss in the wintering range is the main threat.
Scientific name
Helmitheros vermivorum | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Motacilla vermivora; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Helmitheros was introduced in 1819 by Rafinesque. Helmitheros is Greek, from helmis, helminthos 'worm' and thēraō 'to hunt': 'worm-hunter'. vermivorum is Latin, from vermis 'worm' and -vorus '-eating': 'worm-eating'; in fact the bird mainly eats caterpillars and other insects. The specimen the first description was based on came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).