WARBLER QUIZ

If you're a warbler-watcher, try you hand identifying the much-changed-from-summer, recently arrived warbler who this week let me snap the picture at the right.

A good hint is that the dark smudge beneath the throat is produced by dark feathers -- didn't disappear when the bird changed position or got into brighter light.

I'm calling this an immature or female Black-throated Green Warbler, DENDORICA VIRENS. I'm not sure I'd have the courage to ID it if I should see it back in Chiapas or Querétaro, for in most of Mexico immature Townsend's Warblers look a lot like it. However, Townsend's Warblers are upland birds not found in the Yucatán.

During summers Black-throated Green Warblers nest in Canada and the northernmost of the US's eastern states, and winters from central Mexico to Panama. I can remember spring woods along the Mississippi Flyway swarming with these birds, their wheezy EEE-EEE-uh-EEE calls sounding all around. What grand memories and how glad I am to see that this one survives despite all the challenges against it.