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

Cape May Warbler (Dendroica tigrina)


Range: Breeds in Canadian Zone from southern Mackenzie, northern Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia south to Manitoba, northern Maine, and New Hampshire, and in Jamaica; winters in the Bahamas and the West Indies to Tobago.

Not only is the Cape May one of our most beautiful warblers, but its rarity adds greatly to the zest with which one hails the discovery of even an individual. This species, however, is far more numerous even in New England, especially in fall, than it used to be, and in time the bird may even be listed in many of the Eastern States as among the more common migrants.

Although the bulk of the species undoubtedly migrates north through the Mississippi Valley, rarely a spring passes that a few individuals are not reported about Washington, D. C., and I have seen several in a day. At this time of year the Cape May often forsakes the woodlands and appears in orchards or even in city parks, and probably not a season passes that one or more do not visit the Smithsonian or Agricultural Department grounds. Chapman tells us that in Florida he has seen the species “actually common feeding in weedy patches among a rank growth of pokeberries.”

The bird is a rather sluggish, but persistent, insect hunter, though it adds to its bill of fare one item, grapes, which is bringing it into ill repute in parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The sharp-pointed bill of the Cape May enables it readily to puncture the skin, its apparent purpose being to satisfy its thirst with the sweet juice.

The Cape May is a persistent songster, but its song is weak and squeaky and by no means worthy of so superb a creature. Comparatively little is recorded of this bird's nesting habits. It is known to summer from northern Maine northward. A nest found by Banks at St. Johns, New Brunswick, was built in a cedar less than three feet from the ground.

Source: Henry W. Henshaw (April 1917), “Friends of Our Forests”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(4): 310. (Illustration from p. 312.)