Bay-breasted Warbler

About the Bay-breasted Warbler

The breeding male Bay-breasted Warbler is a rich study in chestnut - crown, throat, and flanks all deep bay against a black face and buff neck patch. Fall birds are entirely different: greenish above and buffy below, often showing just a wash of bay on the flanks.

This is a spruce-budworm specialist that breeds in the boreal forests of Canada, and its population rises and falls with the caterpillar outbreaks. Compared with most warblers it forages deliberately, moving slowly through the interior of trees rather than flitting at the edges.

In Texas the Bay-breasted Warbler is a migrant, most numerous along the coast in late April and early May when north-bound birds cross the Gulf, with a smaller passage inland and in fall.