Beak of the Week – Canada Warbler

A flash of gray and yellow in the understory will alert you to the presence of a Canada Warbler searching for its next meal! These medium-sized warblers are blue-gray above and yellow below. They have bold white eye-rings and yellow markings in front of their eyes, giving them a bespectacled appearance. Both sexes have a necklace of streaks across their chest, but males have black streaks and some black markings on the crown and face, whereas females have gray streaks.

Canada Warblers breed throughout the boreal forest, the northeastern U.S., and the Appalachians. They nest on the ground in mixed deciduous-coniferous forests with well-developed understories. Compared to other warblers, they arrive rather late to their breeding grounds, and migrate south early in the fall to spend the winter in the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

On the Upper Texas Coast, they are most commonly seen in mid-May. They can be found at Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary, as well as sanctuaries in High Island, including Boy Scout Woods Bird Sanctuary, Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary, and Texas Ornithological Society’s Hooks Woods Bird Sanctuary.