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Pallas's Leaf Warbler | Phylloscopus proregulus
Pallas' boszanger | Mosquitero de Pallas
Pallas's Leaf Warbler is a tiny, Goldcrest-like leaf warbler from the coniferous forests of southern Siberia and Mongolia, which winters in southern China and Indochina. In this region it is a vagrant with only a handful of records; every find is a major rarity.
Voice
The call is a soft, nasal, slightly rising choo-ee, much less penetrating than that of Yellow-browed Warbler. The song, not to be expected in the region, is loud and varied, with trills and repeated whistles.
Recording: Ray Tsu 诸仁 — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
9–9.5 cm. Small, round and short-tailed, with a strongly striped head: a broad sulphur-yellow crown stripe over a dark crown, a long yellow supercilium that broadens behind the eye, and a dark eye-stripe. Green above and whitish below, with two yellow wing bars and pale tertial edges. The decisive feature is a lemon-yellow rump patch, which shows when the bird hovers at a twig, as it often does.
Confusion species
Yellow-browed Warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus) is larger and longer, with no or only a faint crown stripe and no yellow rump. Hume's Warbler (Phylloscopus humei) is greyer, with one clear wing bar and likewise no yellow rump. Goldcrest (Regulus regulus) and Common Firecrest (Regulus ignicapilla) have a black-bordered crown stripe and no yellow supercilium or rump.
Habitat
As a vagrant in parks, gardens and groves with tall trees, often within a group of chiffchaffs or Yellow-Browed Warblers; forages at the tips of branches and hovers in front of the foliage.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Vagrant. There is a handful of records from Israel, mainly in late autumn and winter; elsewhere in the region there are only a few, not always documented reports. In Iran the species was first recorded in 2013. Breeds in the coniferous forests of southern Siberia, Mongolia and north-eastern China and winters in southern China and northern Indochina; occurs annually in small numbers in autumn in north-western Europe.
How and when to look
A chance for those who systematically check every group of leaf warblers in November and December in the parks and kibbutz gardens of Israel, or in the green oases of the Gulf states. Look for a minute bird hovering at a twig and showing a yellow rump.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened, with a large range. In the region only a vagrant, with no regular occurrence.
Scientific name
Phylloscopus proregulus | (Pallas, 1811)
Pallas described the species in 1811 as Motacilla Proregulus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Phylloscopus was introduced in 1826 by Boie. Phylloscopus is Greek, from phullon 'leaf' and skopos 'seeker', from skopeō 'to watch': the bird that searches the foliage. proregulus combines Latin pro 'close to' with the genus name Regulus: the bird resembles the goldcrest. The specimen the first description was based on came from the Ingoda River, Transbaikalia.