Pine Warbler

About the Pine Warbler

True to its name, the Pine Warbler is a bird of pine forests, and it is one of the few warblers you can reliably find in the same place year-round. Adults are yellow-throated and yellow-breasted with an olive back, white wing-bars, and blurry streaking on the sides; females and young are drabber and grayer. It clings to the trunks and needle clusters as it forages.

Pine Warblers glean insects and spiders among the needles and bark and, unusually for a warbler, also eat seeds - readily visiting feeders for suet and sunflower bits in winter. The song is a pleasant, musical trill.

In Texas the Pine Warbler is a year-round resident of the pine woods of the east, with numbers boosted in winter as more birds move in.

A note from behind the lens: their attachment to pines and willingness to come to feeders make them easier than most warblers. Work a stand of pines or a feeder edge, prefocus on a needle cluster or a suet perch, and let filtered light warm that yellow breast.