Icterine Warbler | Hippolais icterina

Voice

Usually silent on migration, but in spring migrants sometimes sing in the Levant and Egypt. The song is a long, fast medley of scratchy, nasal and clear notes with much mimicry, in which a nasal, three-note dee-dee-roy keeps recurring. The call is a hard tek or tettettet.

Identification

12–13.5 cm. Grey-green above and sulphur yellow to yellowish white below, with an open, pale face, a long, broad bill with an orange lower mandible and a flat, sloping forehead giving the head a peaked, angular shape. Primary projection long, about equal to the tertials, and a pale wing panel on the secondaries, striking in fresh spring birds. Legs blue-grey, tail square-ended. Autumn birds, especially juveniles, are much duller: greyer above and almost white below with only a yellow wash, recalling an olivaceous warbler; the pale panel and long wing remain the key.

Confusion species

Melodious Warbler (Hippolais polyglotta) is the real problem: rounder-headed, with a short primary projection of at most half the tertial length, no or only a faint wing panel and brownish-grey legs; it is rare in the east of the region. Olive-Tree Warbler (Hippolais olivetorum) is much larger and grey without yellow. Dull autumn birds are confused with Eastern Olivaceous Warbler (Iduna pallida), which is smaller and shorter-winged, lacks yellow and a real panel, and constantly dips its tail. Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) is smaller, with a fine bill and a clear supercilium.

Habitat

On migration in trees and tall leafy bushes: riverine woodland along the Nile and in wadis, orchards, olive and date plantations, parks and gardens, and in the desert the trees of oases and kibbutzim. Gleans insects high in the canopy.

Range and movements

Passage migrant, mainly through the eastern part of the region. In spring (late April – early June) numerous in north-east Libya (Cyrenaica) and Egypt and fairly common in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; in autumn (August – October) scarcer and more widespread, also in Tunisia. Scarce in Morocco and Algeria, scarce to rare in Iraq and Arabia, mainly in western Saudi Arabia and Yemen; a rare visitor to the Gulf states and Oman. It does not breed in the region. Beyond it the species breeds from north-east France and Scandinavia to western Siberia and winters in Africa south of the equator, from Zambia and Angola to South Africa.

• Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

Look for it in May in the gardens and orchards of Cyrenaica or in the trees of a kibbutz in the Arava and around Eilat after a night of northerly winds. In autumn it sometimes drops into coastal bushes and trees in Egypt and Israel.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened and fairly common in Europe, although it has declined on the western edge of its breeding range. In the region a passage migrant with no known threats beyond the general pressure on stopover sites along the edges of the Sahara and the deserts.

Scientific name

Hippolais icterina | (Vieillot, 1817)

Vieillot described the species in 1817 as Sylvia icterina; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Hippolais was introduced in 1827 by Conrad von Baldenstein. Hippolais goes back to Greek hupolais, a small bird mentioned by Aristotle, misspelt by Linnaeus; the word may be onomatopoeic or formed from hupo 'under' and laas 'stone'. icterina is Greek for 'jaundice-yellow', from ikteros, which denoted both jaundice and yellow-green birds, after the yellow underparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from France.