MacGillivray's Warbler

About the MacGillivray's Warbler

MacGillivray's Warbler is the western skulker of the warbler family - a handsome bird with a slate-gray hood over olive upperparts and yellow underparts, wearing bold white crescents above and below the eye, its best field mark and the quickest separation from the look-alike Mourning Warbler of the East.

True to its lineage, it stays low and hidden. MacGillivray's works dense brush and thickets near the ground, and even in migration it is usually detected as a hard "tsik" call and a flash of gray and yellow diving deeper into cover.

The species breeds in brushy mountain habitats across the West and migrates chiefly through West Texas, where it is regular in desert oases and canyon thickets. Farther east in the state it turns rare - a MacGillivray's in Central Texas is a bird worth documenting carefully, crescents and all.

The name honors a Scottish naturalist who never saw one; the bird itself honors the family tradition of making observers work. Patience near low cover, and a little luck, are the price of a clean look like this one.