Yellow-throated Warbler

About the Yellow-throated Warbler

A crisp, formal-looking warbler in gray, white, and black, with a brilliant lemon-yellow throat and upper breast that stops abruptly against white underparts. A bold white eyebrow and a white crescent below the eye stand out against the black face mask, and there is a row of black streaks along each flank. The pattern is clean enough that the bird looks tidier than most warblers.

It behaves unlike most of its family too. Rather than flitting through foliage, the Yellow-throated Warbler creeps deliberately along big limbs and up trunks, probing bark crevices and clusters of needles like a small nuthatch, often high in the canopy of the tallest trees available. The song is a series of clear ringing notes sliding down the scale and rising at the end.

The nest is placed high, saddled on a branch or hidden in hanging Spanish moss where that is available, which makes it very hard to find.

In Texas it breeds in the tall cypress along Hill Country rivers and in the pines and hardwoods of the east, arriving early - often in March, ahead of the main warbler wave. Small numbers linger through winter in the southern part of the state, which makes it one of the few warblers you might find here in any month.