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

Nashville Warbler (Vermivora rubricapilla rubricapilla)


Range: Breeds in Canadian and Transition Zones from southern Saskatchewan, northern Ontario, central Quebec, and Cape Breton Island south to Nebraska, northern Illinois, northern Pennsylvania, Northern New Jersey, and Connecticut; winters from Vera Cruz and Chiapas to Guatemala.

As Wilson never saw but three individuals of the Nashville warbler, all taken near Nashville, Tennessee, he not unnaturally named his new discovery for that city, apparently believing it to be a local species. Far from being so, however, it is now known to inhabit most of the eastern United States. Without doubt the bird is much more common than it was in Wilson's time, perhaps due to the fact that second growth and areas of low woods, its preferred haunts, have largely replaced the denser forests of the early part of the nineteenth century. One cannot wander far afield in Massachusetts in summer time without hearing its song or songs, since it is not only a frequent and vivacious songster, but has a number of ditties in its repertoire, including a flight song.

I never found but one nest, and this was on a little pine-wooded knoll in a small depression in the earth, only partially concealed by thin grass. I should never have found it but for the fact that the bird flushed from between my feet. So far as known, the Nashville always nests on the ground. Its preference for the ground as a nesting site is the more remarkable, since the bird rarely or never hunts there, but prefers to seek its insect food among the foliage, often of the tallest elms and chestnuts and other giants of the forest.

The Calaveras warbler (Vermivora rubricapilla gutturalis) is a form closely allied to the Nashville, but confined chiefly to the Pacific coast, extending eastward to eastern Oregon and northern Idaho. Fisher is quoted by Chapman as saying: “The Calaveras warbler is a characteristic denizen of the chaparral and is found on both slopes of the Sierra Nevadas about as far south as Mount Whitney. It frequents the belts of the yellow, sugar, and Jeffry pines, and ranges up into the red-fir zone. During the height of the nesting season, while the female is assiduously hunting among the dense cover of bushes, the male is often singing in a pine or fir, far above mundane household cares.”

Source: Henry W. Henshaw (April 1917), “Friends of Our Forests”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(4): 311. (Illustration from p. 312.)