BLUE-WINGED WARBLER
HABITS
Bagg and Eliot (1937) write: “According to Wilson, this species was discovered by William Bartram, who gave it the descriptive name Parus aureus alis caeruleis (Blue-winged Golden Tit), and sent a specimen to ‘Mr. Edwards’ by whom it was drawn and etched. Edwards suspected its identity with the Pine Creeper of Catesby: hence its present inappropriate name, pinus.” As there are other warblers whose wings are more distinctly blue, those of this warbler being only bluish gray, the old familiar name, blue-winged yellow warbler, which stood for many years, seems more appropriate and more truly descriptive.
The blue-winged warbler is a bird of the so-called Carolinian Life Zone, with a rather restricted breeding range in the Central States and not quite reaching our northern borders. Its center of abundance in the breeding season seems to be in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Kentucky, northern Missouri, and southern Iowa. Its range extends northeastward to New Jersey, southeastern New York, and southern Connecticut. It is fairly common in the latter State, and I know of one small colony in eastern Rhode Island within a mile or two of the Massachusetts line. North of these points in New England it occurs only as a straggler or casual breeder. In southern New England I have found it in rather open situations, in neglected pastures where there is low shrubbery, brier patches, and bushy thickets around the edges; or in similar growth along the borders of woods, usually on dry uplands; and sometimes in the rank growth of tall grasses and weeds near the borders of swamps or streams.
Frank L. Burns wrote to Dr. Chapman (1907) of its haunts in Pennsylvania: “This species is here an inhabitant of the rather open swampy thickets, upland clearings, neglected pastures and fence rows, where the grass and weeds have not been choked out by a too thick growth of briers, bushes, saplings and vines.” Dr. Lawrence H. Wilkinshaw tells me that, in southern Michigan, “this species loves deep swampy woods, where the golden-winged warbler and cerulean warbler are found.” This is quite different from the haunts in which we find it in the east, though Dr. Chapman (1907) says: “It is not, as a rule, a deep woods warbler, though I have found it nesting in heavy forest, but prefers rather, bordering second growths, with weedy openings, from which it may follow lines or patches of trees to haunts some distance from the woods.”
Spring.—From its winter home in Central America the blue-winged warbler seems to migrate from Yucatán straight across the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf States and along the eastern coast of Texas to Louisiana. It is apparently very rare anywhere in Florida or the Keys, and along the Atlantic coast, where it is comparatively rare, it is found at low elevations. It migrates northward mainly west of the Alleghenies, seeming to avoid the mountains; the main body of the species seems to travel through the Mississippi Valley to the centers of abundance in the central States. Perhaps the birds that settle in southern New York and New England travel up the Ohio River, drifting through Pennsylvania and New Jersey to their destination. According to Milton B. Trautman (1940) this warbler seems to be a rare or uncommon spring migrant in central Ohio, and “in some migrations only 2 individuals were noted” at Buckeye Lake; this adds support to the theory that the birds follow the river along the southern border of the State.
Nesting.—Although Wilson (1831) gave a very good description of the nest of the blue-winged yellow warbler, very little was known of its nesting in southern New England prior to about 1880, when nests were found in southern Connecticut, where it is now known to be a fairly common breeder. I found two nests near West Haven, Conn., on June 8, 1910; both were close to the ground but not quite on it; one was in a clump of blackberry vines, weeds, and grasses, in a swampy corner of a scrubby lot; the other was in a bunch of grass and rank weeds on some sprout land among some mixed bushes. Again, on June 1, 1934, I photographed (pl. 12) a nest near Hadlyme, Conn., on the edge of an open, neglected field and close to the border of some young woods. It was built among and attached to the upright stems of a clump of tall goldenrod. These were all typical of the nests described below.