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Cerulean Warbler | Setophaga cerulea
Azuurzanger | Chipe cerúleo
The Cerulean Warbler is a small, short-tailed warbler of the treetops. The male is sky-blue above and white below with a narrow dark breast band. It breeds in deciduous forest in eastern North America and winters in the Andes; it crosses the guide area only on migration.
Voice
The song is a series of buzzy notes that accelerates and ends in a high, rising buzzy trill; in the guide area heard mainly in spring. The call is a short chip; in flight a buzzy zee.
Recording: Matt Wistrand — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm. Short-tailed and long-winged. The male has sky-blue upperparts with black streaks on the back, two white wing bars, a white throat and underparts, a narrow blue-black band across the breast and blue-black streaks on the flanks. The female is blue-green to turquoise above, with a pale yellow eyebrow, two white wing bars and yellowish-white underparts with faint flank streaks. Young birds in autumn are greener above and yellower below. Both sexes have white spots in the tail.
Confusion species
Northern Parula Setophaga americana has a yellow throat and breast, white eye-arcs and a green patch on the back. The female Black-throated Blue Warbler Setophaga caerulescens lacks wing bars. Females and young birds resemble those of Bay-breasted Warbler Setophaga castanea and Blackpoll Warbler Setophaga striata, but those have a streaked olive-green back without a blue tone and a longer tail.
Habitat
On migration the canopy of humid lowland, foothill and montane forest and tall trees at forest edges, often in mixed flocks with other warblers and vireos. It searches the outer foliage for insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds in the eastern United States and extreme southern Canada. Winters on the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Venezuela and Colombia to Peru and Bolivia. Passes through the guide area, mainly across the Gulf of Mexico and through the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize and the Caribbean slope of Central America to the south; rare in western Mexico.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chances are during spring migration in April, when birds rest in tall trees on the Yucatán Peninsula and along the Caribbean coast before crossing to the north, and during autumn migration in August and September in the foothill forest of Costa Rica and Panama.
Conservation status
Near Threatened (NT). The breeding population has declined steeply since the 1960s through loss and fragmentation of mature deciduous forest in North America and through deforestation in the Andes, where montane forest gives way to farming and sun coffee.
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.