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Painted Whitestart | Myioborus pictus
Roodbuikzanger | Pavito alas blancas
The Painted Whitestart is a black warbler with a bright red belly and large white patches on the wings and tail. It lives in pine-oak forest and wooded ravines in the mountains. While foraging it constantly spreads its tail and wings, flashing white and flushing insects.
Voice
The song is a fairly rich, sweet series of repeated notes, roughly weeta weeta weeta wee. The call is a whistled chee-ree, unlike the short chip notes of most other warblers.
Recording: David A. Brinkman — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm. Almost entirely glossy black, with the centre of the breast and belly bright red. A large white patch on the wing, much white in the outer tail feathers and a narrow white crescent below the eye. The sexes are alike. Young birds lack the red; their belly is sooty black. Bill short and black.
Confusion species
Slate-throated Whitestart Myioborus miniatus has slate-grey rather than black upperparts, a chestnut crown patch and no white wing patch or white crescent below the eye. Red-faced Warbler Cardellina rubrifrons is grey with a red face and a black cap.
Habitat
Pine-oak forest, oak woodland and wooded ravines and canyons in the mountains, often with sycamores along streams; mostly between 1500 and 3000 m. It searches for insects on trunks, branches and in the foliage, with drooped wings and a fanned tail, and joins mixed flocks outside the breeding season. The nest is built on the ground, hidden against a steep bank or rock.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From the south-western United States (Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas) through the mountains of Mexico, both the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental, the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and the Sierra Madre del Sur, to Chiapas and on through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to northern and central Nicaragua. Birds from the United States largely move to Mexico in winter.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The white and red of the tail and wings show from afar as it flutters through pine-oak forest; the whistled call often gives it away first.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Widespread and common in the mountains of Mexico and northern Central America.
Scientific name
Myioborus pictus | (Swainson, 1829)
Swainson described the species in 1829 as Setophaga picta; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Myioborus was introduced in 1865 by Baird. Myioborus is Greek, from muia 'fly' and -boros '-devouring': 'fly-eater'. pictus is Latin for 'painted', after the black, white and red plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Real del Monte, Hidalgo, Mexico.