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Blackpoll Warbler | Setophaga striata
Zwartkopzanger | Reinita estriada
The Blackpoll Warbler is the long-distance flier among the wood-warblers. From the conifer forests of Canada and Alaska many birds leave the coast of north-eastern North America in autumn and cross the Atlantic in a single flight to the Antilles or northern South America, a journey of about 3,000 km and up to three days without stopping. For this species the Caribbean is therefore mainly a staging area, not a wintering ground.
Voice
The call is a full, short chip; the flight call a high, thin tseet. The song, sometimes heard on the islands in spring, is a series of very high, even tsi-tsi-tsi-tsi notes that swells in volume in the middle.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12.5–15 cm, rather long-winged and short-tailed. The breeding male has a plain black cap, white cheeks, a black malar stripe, black-streaked grey upperparts and white underparts with black flank streaks. The female is grey-green and finely streaked. In autumn all birds are olive-green above with faint back streaks, yellow-green to whitish below with blurry flank streaks, a dark eye-line, two white wing bars and white undertail coverts. The legs are yellowish and the soles bright yellow, a feature useful in every plumage.
Confusion species
Black-and-white Warbler Mniotilta varia resembles the breeding male but has a striped crown and creeps over bark. In autumn Bay-breasted Warbler Setophaga castanea is closest: it has unstreaked, warmer-toned flanks, buffy undertail coverts and dark legs. Pine Warbler Setophaga pinus has an unstreaked back, a heavier bill and dark legs. Black-throated Green Warbler Setophaga virens has a yellow face framed by a dark cheek outline.
Habitat
On migration in almost any trees: moist and dry forest, coastal woodland and mangrove, coastal scrub, parks and gardens. It forages fairly high in the canopy for insects and spiders, often slowly and deliberately, and also takes berries on migration. After the crossing, birds sometimes arrive exhausted on small islands and in coastal settlements.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Passage migrant through almost the whole region. In autumn common in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hispaniola and the Lesser Antilles, and regular in the ABC Islands and Trinidad and Tobago; in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands it is scarcer at that season. In spring the birds return further west, through Hispaniola, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands to Florida. Breeds from Alaska across Canada to the north-eastern United States and winters in northern South America, mainly in the Amazon basin.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best looked for after a cold front or easterly winds in October, in coastal woodland and gardens in Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles. Autumn birds are identified by the combination of blurry flank streaks, white undertail and yellow soles.
Conservation status
Near Threatened (IUCN). The species is still numerous, but North American surveys show a strong, long-term decline. Because the birds depend on a few coastal staging sites before the crossing and on first landfall sites on the islands afterwards, the conservation of coastal woodland in the Antilles matters for this species.
Scientific name
Setophaga striata | (Forster, 1772)
Forster described the species in 1772 as Muscicapa striata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Setophaga was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Setophaga is Greek, from sēs, sētos 'moth' and -phagos '-eating': 'moth-eater'. striata is Latin for 'striated', after the streaked pattern of the plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Fort Severn, Hudson Bay.