Northern Parula

About the Northern Parula

The Northern Parula is one of the smallest warblers, a blue-gray sprite with a greenish patch on the back, two white wing bars, white eye crescents, and a yellow throat and breast; breeding males add a rusty-and-black band across the chest.

Parulas are canopy birds that forage in the outer twigs, often hanging upside down like chickadees. The song is a rising, buzzy trill that snaps over the top. Nesting is tied to hanging epiphytes - Spanish moss in the South - into which the female tucks her nest pocket.

In Texas the Northern Parula is a spring and summer breeder in the moist woodlands of the eastern half of the state, wherever mossy riverside timber stands, and a common migrant elsewhere.