American Redstart

About the American Redstart

The American Redstart is the flashiest dancer in the warbler family - the adult male coal black with brilliant orange patches in the wings, tail, and sides, the female and young male gray-olive with the same pattern in yellow. No other North American warbler wears anything like it.

Redstarts hunt theatrically, drooping their wings and fanning their tails to flash those bright panels, startling insects into flight and then snapping them up in quick aerial twists. The constant flicking makes them one of the easiest warblers to notice and one of the hardest to photograph - they simply never stop.

In Texas the American Redstart is a spring and fall migrant, abundant along the coast in migration and regular in smaller numbers through Central Texas, where a flashing orange-and-black male working a creekside pecan is a highlight of any May morning.