Black-throated Gray Warbler

About the Black-throated Gray Warbler

A warbler in formal dress: zebra-striped black and white head, gray back, crisp flank streaks - and one tiny surprise, a spot of yellow just in front of the eye, the only color the bird allows itself. That yellow lore is the field mark that settles the identification at a glance.

Black-throated Gray Warblers are westerners, summering in the juniper and oak country of the mountain West. In Texas they breed in the Davis and Guadalupe mountains and pass through the Trans-Pecos in numbers each spring and fall; farther east they turn into a genuinely good find, with a scatter of records in the Hill Country most years.

They forage deliberately for a warbler, working the outer foliage of junipers and oaks at comfortable heights rather than racing through the canopy - a courtesy their eastern cousins rarely extend. The buzzy, see-sawing song carries the same lazy rhythm as a Black-throated Green's but in a flatter key.

For the photographer the species is a gift among warblers: slower, lower, and dressed in a pattern that holds detail in almost any light.