Townsend's Warbler

About the Townsend's Warbler

A Black-throated Green Warbler dipped in extra ink: the Townsend's wears the same yellow-and-black formula but bolder, with a full dark cheek patch set in a yellow face and heavy black streaking down lemon flanks. A spring male in a pine top is one of the handsomest warblers in the West.

The species breeds in the great conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest and winters from Mexico to Costa Rica, which routes its migration through the western mountains - in Texas, that means the Trans-Pecos, where the Davis and Guadalupe ranges catch them in April-May and again from late August through October. Stray birds turn up farther east most years, always worth a second look at any black-throated warbler in fall.

On the wintering grounds many Townsend's defend patches of highland forest where they feed heavily on the sugary secretions of scale insects - an odd, honeydew-powered economy that lets them hold territories far from any flower.

In migration they work conifer and oak foliage methodically, often high, and a canyon with big pines - the Boot Spring country of Big Bend, a Davis Mountains campground - is the classic place to find one at eye level on a slope.