Friday's Foto

The Bay-breasted Warbler is a perfect example of how it isn't necessary to sport brilliantly colored plumage to be a stunning songbird. This species is relatively large by warbler standards weighing in, on average, at 12.5 grams. Wintering in Costa Rica, Panama, and northern South America, the Bay-breasted breeds almost entirely in the boreal forests of Canada. Preferring thick stands of spruce and fir, their summer diet consists primary of insects. Their populations vary considerably based on outbreaks of the spruce budworm, which becomes a large part of their diet. On their wintering grounds they switch to mostly a fruit diet.

During the fall migration, when their plumage transitions to a mostly greenish color, the Bay-breasted Warblers becomes one of our “confusing fall warblers”. Learn how to distinguish them from another confusing fall warbler, the Blackpoll Warbler here.

Despite a slow decline in population the IUCN Red List lists their conservation status as “Least Concern”. It is not on the State of North America's Birds 2016 Watchlist.

It’s scientific name, Setophaga castanea, means moth eater; chestnut-colored.