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Photo by Larry Master
Photo Copyright Larry Master
Tennessee Warbler
Oreothlypis peregrina
NatureServe conservation status
Global (G-rank): G5
State (S-rank): SNA
External links
General information
The Tennessee warbler, Vermivora peregrina, breeds in Canada and a few places in northeastern America, and winters from southern Mexico to Venezuela. It is a rare migrant through Utah. Its habitat is deciduous, mixed, and coniferous forest with openings and shrubby growth. This species eats mainly insects, but it also consumes some fruit and berries, as well as nectar on its winter range.
This warbler nests on the ground, often on a hummock of moss or at the base of a small tree or shrub. Typically there are five or six eggs (rarely as few as three or as many as eight), which are incubated by the female parent. There is uncertainty concerning the incubation period, which has been estimated as eleven to twelve days and also reported as seven to eight days. The nestlings are tended by both parents. The time until fledging is also not known with certainty, but it appears that the young leave the nest eleven to twelve days after hatching. This species is a very rare host of the brown-headed cowbird.
This species was originally described and named based on a specimen collected in1832 in Tennessee, which resulted in the common name that it was given. However, the specimen was a migrating individual, and the common name assigned to it is somewhat misleading because the species neither breeds nor winters in Tennessee.
Species range
BREEDING: southeastern Alaska and southern Yukon to northern Saskatchewan and southern Labrador, south to southern British Columbia, northwestern Montana, southern Manitoba, northern Minnesota, northern New England, and Nova Scotia. NON-BREEDING: Oaxaca and Tabasco in Mexico south through Central America to northern and western Venezuela, northern and western Colombia, and northern Ecuador (Ridgely and Tudor 1989). Transient through eastern Mexico and, rarely, the Yucatan Peninsula and western Caribbean.
Migration
Migrates mainly through Texas and Mississippi Valley. Usually arrives in Costa Rica mid- to late September, with large waves from mid-October into November; departs in April or early May (Stiles and Skutch 1989). Present in South America mainly October-April (Ridgely and Tudor 1989).
Habitat
Openings of northern woodland, edges of dense spruce forests, cleared balsam-tamarack bogs, grassy places of open aspen and pines, alder and willow thickets, open deciduous second growth. In migration and winter generally in single species flocks in tops of trees of various woodland types--not typically in continuous mature forest; in winter prefers semi-open, second growth, coffee plantations, gardens (Stiles and Skutch 1989). BREEDING: Nests in hollow of moss in bog, or on higher level ground or hillside, in thickets or in open at base of grass or shrub (Terres 1980).
Food habits
Eats insects and spiders, seeds, fruit juices; forages over terminal twigs and leaves of trees and in dense patches of weeds (Terres 1980). In tropics, small fruits are common in the diet (Greenberg 1981); Costa Rica: actively gleans foliage, probes rolled leaves, visits flowers for nectar, pierces berries to suck juice, eats small berries, also protein corpuscles of CECROPIA, attends feeders for bananas (Stiles and Skutch 1989). South America: forages usually high in trees; attracted to flowering trees and shrubs (Ridgely and Tudor 1989).
Ecology
Nonbreeding: social, usually in small flocks (Stiles and Skutch 1989, Ridgely and Tudor 1989).
Reproductive characteristics
Eggs are laid in June-July. Clutch size: 4-7 (commonly 6). Incubation probably lasts 11-12 days. Reproductive output increases when spruce budworm is abundant.
Threats or limiting factors
Much of the core of this species' range is in the western boreal forest, so is threatened by forest conversion to agriculture along the southern edges of the boreal zone. In Saskatchewan alone, 4368 square kilometers of forest was lost to agriculture in the period 1966-1994, a rate of -0.87%/year (Hobson et al. 2002). Much of the remaining southern boreal forest in western Canada has been leased to forestry companies (Cummings et al. 1994, Stelfox 1995).
References
- Rimmer, C. C., and K. P. McFarland. 1998. Tennessee warbler. Birds of North America 350: 1–23.
- Baicich, P. J., and C. J. O. Harrison. 1997. A guide to the nests, eggs, and nestlings of North American birds. 2nd ed. Academic, San Diego. 347 pp.
- Ehrlich, P. R., D. S. Dobkin, and D. Wheye. 1988. The birder’s handbook[:] a field guide to the natural history of North American birds. Simon & Schuster, New York. xxx + 785 pp.
