The hooded warbler (''Setophaga citrina'') is a

New World warbler The New World warblers or wood-warblers are a group of small, often colorful, passerine birds that make up the family Parulidae and are restricted to the New World. They are not closely related to Old World warblers or Australian warblers. Mos ...

. It breeds in eastern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and across the

eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

and into southernmost

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

(

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

). It is migratory, wintering in

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

and the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. Hooded warblers are very rare vagrants to western

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. Recent genetic research has suggested that the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

of ''Wilsonia'' (hooded warbler ''W. citrina'') and of ''

Setophaga ''Setophaga'' is a genus of birds of the New World warbler family Parulidae. It contains at least 33 species. The males in breeding plumage are often highly colorful. The ''Setophaga'' warblers are an example of adaptive radiation with the vario ...

'' (

American redstart The American redstart (''Setophaga ruticilla'') is a New World warbler. It is unrelated to the Old World (common) redstart. Taxonomy The American redstart was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' und ...

''S. ruticilla'') are closely related and should be merged into the same genus. As the name ''Setophaga'' (published in 1827) takes priority over ''Wilsonia'' (published in 1838), hooded warbler would then be transferred as ''Setophaga citrina''. This change has been accepted by the North American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

, and the

IOC World Bird List ''Birds of the World: Recommended English Names'' is a paperback book, written by Frank Gill and Minturn Wright on behalf of the International Ornithologists' Union. The book is an attempt to produce a standardized set of English names for all b ...

. The South American Classification Committee continues to list the bird in the genus '' Wilsonia''.

Taxonomy

The French polymath

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent ...

described the hooded warbler in 1779 in his '' Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux'' from a specimen collected in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by

François-Nicolas Martinet François-Nicolas Martinet (1731 - 1800) was a French engineer, engraver and naturalist. Martinet engraved the plates for numerous works on natural history, especially ornithology. Notable in particular are those for ''l'Ornithologia, sive Synop ...

in the ''Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle'' which was produced under the supervision of

Edme-Louis Daubenton Edme-Louis Daubenton (12 August 1730 – 12 December 1785) was a French naturalist. Daubenton was the cousin of another French naturalist, Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton. Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon engaged Edme-Louis Daubenton to su ...

to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist

Pieter Boddaert Pieter Boddaert (1730 – 6 May 1795) was a Dutch physician and natural history, naturalist. Early life, family and education Boddaert was the son of a Middelburg jurist and poet by the same name (1694–1760). The younger Pieter obtained his M.D ...

coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Muscicapa citrina'' in his catalogue of the ''Planches Enluminées''. The hooded warbler was formerly placed in the genus '' Wilsonia''. A molecular phylogenetic study of the family

Parulidae The New World warblers or wood-warblers are a group of small, often colorful, passerine birds that make up the family Parulidae and are restricted to the New World. They are not closely related to Old World warblers or Australian warblers. Most ...

published in 2010 found that the hooded warbler was embedded in a clade that contained species then assigned to ''Dendroica'' as well as two of four species of ''Parula'' and the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genera ''Catharopeza'' and ''

''. To create a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

genus, all members of the clade were placed in the expanded genus ''Setophaga'', which under the rules of the

International Code of Zoological Nomenclature The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals. It is also informally known as the ICZN Code, for its publisher, the ...

, had priority. The genus ''Setophaga'' had been introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1827. The species is monotypic; no subspecies are recognised. The genus name ''Setophaga'' is from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''ses'', "moth", and ', "eating", and the specific ''citrina'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for citrine.

Description

The hooded warbler is a small bird and mid-sized warbler, measuring in length and weighing . The hooded warbler has a wingspan of 6.9 in (17.5 cm). It has a plain olive/green-brown back, and yellow underparts. Their outer

rectrices Flight feathers (''Pennae volatus'') are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (), singular remex (), while those on the tail ...

have whitish vanes. Males have distinctive black hoods which surround their yellow faces; the female has an olive-green cap which does not extend to the forehead, ears and throat instead. Males attain their hood at about 9–12 months of age; younger birds are essentially identical to (and easily confused with) females. The song is a series of musical notes which sound like: ''wheeta wheeta whee-tee-oh'', for which a common mnemonic is "The red, the red T-shirt" or "Come to the woods or you won't see me". The call of these birds is a loud ''chip''.

Life history

These birds feed on

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s, which are often found in low vegetation or caught by flycatching. Hooded warblers' breeding habitats are broadleaved woodlands with dense undergrowth. These birds nest in low areas of a bush, laying three to five eggs in a cup-shaped nest. Hooded warblers are often the victims of

brood parasitism Brood parasites are animals that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own ...

by the

brown-headed cowbird The brown-headed cowbird (''Molothrus ater'') is a small, obligate brood parasitic icterid native to temperate and subtropical North America. It is a permanent resident in the southern parts of its range; northern birds migrate to the southern ...

, especially where the hooded warblers' forest habitats are fragmented. In areas with protected woodlands or recovering wooded habitat, the hooded warbler population is stable and possibly increasing.

Gallery

References

External links

Hooded warbler species account
– Cornell Lab of Ornithology

– USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter

(for

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Saint Vincent and the Grenadines () is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lie in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea wh ...

) with Range Map at bird-stamps.org * *
Hooded warbler bird sound
at Florida Museum of Natural History * {{Taxonbar, from=Q27075904 hooded warbler Native birds of the Eastern United States Birds of Appalachia (United States) Birds of Central America Birds of the Caribbean Birds of the Dominican Republic hooded warbler Taxa named by Pieter Boddaert Birds of Mexico Birds of the Yucatán Peninsula