Canada Warbler

About the Canada Warbler

The Canada Warbler wears a necklace you will not forget - slate blue-gray above and bright yellow below, with a crisp black band of streaks strung across the chest and bold white "spectacles" around the eye. Males in spring are immaculate; females wear a fainter version of the same outfit.

It is a bird of shady understory even in migration, working low through thickets and creek-edge tangles rather than the treetops, flitting constantly and often snapping insects in short flycatching sallies. Canada Warblers are among the later spring migrants, pushing through Texas mostly in May on their way to cool northern forests, and among the earliest to head back south.

In Texas the Canada Warbler is a spring and fall migrant, regular on the coast but always a quality find inland - in Central Texas a necklaced male low in a shady park thicket is the kind of May bird that makes the whole morning.