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

Prairie Warbler (Dendroica discolor)


Range: Breeds chiefly in Carolinian and Austroriparian Zones from southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, southern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and (along the coast) from Massachusetts south to southwestern Missouri, northern Mississippi, northwestern Georgia, Florida, and the Bahamas, and north locally to central Michigan, southern Ontario, and New Hampshire; winters from central Florida through the Bahamas and the West Indies.

The prairie, a dainty little warbler in its variegated black, yellow, and chestnut dress, is common from Florida to the New England States and from Nebraska and Kansas east to the Atlantic. Its choice of habitat varies considerably locally; but wherever it may be found there is nothing in the habits of the bird that justifies its common name, which is entirely misleading, since it has no predilection for prairies or indeed for open country of any sort. In Massachusetts it frequents rocky barberry pastures on open hillsides dotted with cedars. About Washington it frequents sprout lands, and when it first arrives from the south is found almost exclusively in groves of the Jersey scrub pine or in junipers. It is an active insect hunter, moving rapidly among the foliage, now here, now there, ever and again sending forth its characteristic song. Its unusually compact and pretty nest is often placed in the crotch of a barberry bush in Massachusetts or elsewhere in junipers or in low deciduous bushes.

Source: Henry W. Henshaw (April 1917), “Friends of Our Forests”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(4): 319. (Illustration from p. 317.)