National Geographic Magazine/Volume 31/Number 4/Friends of Our Forests/Canada Warbler

Canada Warbler (Wilsonia canadensis)


Range: Breeds in the Canadian Zone and casually in the Transition from central Alberta, southern Keewatin, northern Ontario, northern Quebec, and Newfoundland south to central Minnesota, central Michigan, southern Ontario, central New York, and Massachusetts, and along the Alleghenies to North Carolina and Tennessee; winters in Ecuador and Peru.

The Canada warbler is always associated in my mind with the black-cap, in company with which it is frequently found during migration. The association is purely accidental and results from a common preference for the same hunting grounds. A path or road through swampy ground, especially if bordered by old willow trees, is sure to have its quota of this warbler and the Wilson black-cap during migration.

Like the black-cap, the Canada warbler is half flycatcher, half warbler, and the click of the bird's mandibles as they close on some hapless insect caught in mid-air is often the first indication of its presence. Unlike many of the family, it sings much during its spring migration. The song is loud for the size of the warbler and is very characteristic. The bird builds a rather bulky nest of leaves and grasses, which it places in a mossy bank or under a moss-grown log. It is an assiduous and active insect hunter and gleans among the leaves and twigs after the fashion of the parula warbler.

Source: Henry W. Henshaw (April 1917), “Friends of Our Forests”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(4): 314. (Illustration from p. 320.)