National Geographic Magazine/Volume 31/Number 4/Friends of Our Forests/Black-throated Gray Warbler

Black-throated Gray Warbler (Dendroica nigrescens)


Range: Breeds in Transition Zone from southern British Columbia, Nevada, northern Utah, and northwestern Colorado south to northern Lower California, southern Arizona, and northern New Mexico; winters in southern Lower California and in Mexico from Durango to Michoacan, Vera Cruz, and Oaxaca.

The handsome black-throated gray warbler is exclusively western in distribution, from our southern border to British Columbia. Though I have seen it many times, I am unable to recall any especially salient characteristics possessed by the species. Like others of the family, the black-throat is an active insect hunter, both among the oaks and various kinds of scrub growths of the valleys and the conifers of higher altitudes. The bird seems naturally to suggest the black-throated green warbler of the Eastern States, but I am not aware that in habits it is more nearly comparable to that species than to others. In choice of nesting sites it exhibits a wide range of taste, and nests have been found in scrub oaks, pines, and firs, and varying in height from the ground from 3 or 4 feet up to 50 feet or more.

Source: Henry W. Henshaw (April 1917), “Friends of Our Forests”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(4): 318. (Illustration from p. 316.)