Hooded Warbler

About the Hooded Warbler

The male Hooded Warbler wears a complete black hood and bib wrapped around a bright yellow face - a pattern shared by no other bird. Females show a variable shadow of the hood. Both sexes flash large white tail spots as they fan and flick the tail, a constant habit that helps flush insect prey.

Hooded Warblers are birds of the forest understory, hunting insects and spiders in the shaded shrub layer rather than the canopy. The song is a loud, ringing weeta-weeta-wee-tee-o, and males sing it tirelessly from low and mid-level perches.

In Texas the species breeds in the moist hardwood forests of the eastern part of the state and passes through the rest of Texas in migration, when coastal thickets can hold many in a single April day.