The white-winged warbler (''Xenoligea montana''), also called the white-winged ground-warbler, is a

Vulnerable species A vulnerable species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being threatened species, threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatened species, ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

of the family

Phaenicophilidae Phaenicophilidae is a family of passerine birds. It consists of three genera and four species, all endemic to Hispaniola, which have been traditionally placed in the families Thraupidae (''Phaenicophilus'') and Parulidae The New World warbl ...

, the Hispaniolan tanagers. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the island of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

which is shared by

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

and the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The white-winged warbler is the only member of genus ''Xenoligea''. It was originally named ''Microligea montana'', sharing that genus with the green-tailed warbler (''M. palustris''), but was later recognized in its own genus. Those two species were originally placed in the New World wood warbler 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 ...

, but taxonomists were unsure they belonged there. DNA evidence published in the early 2010s showed they were not related to other wood warblers and in 2017, they were moved to the newly created family Phaenicophilidae. The two species in the genus ''

Phaenicophilus ''Phaenicophilus'' is a genus of birds that was formerly placed in the family Thraupidae, but is now placed in the Hispaniolan tanager family Phaenicophilidae. Its members are sometimes known as palm-tanagers. The genus ''Phaenicophilus'' was i ...

'' were also moved there from the "true" tanager family

Thraupidae The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotropica ...

. The white-winged warbler is

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 ...

, with no subspecies recognized.

Description

The white-winged warbler is and weighs . The sexes are alike and not particularly dimorphous. Adults have a gray head and neck, a white stripe from the beak to the eye above black lores, and white arcs above and below the eye. The back and rump is olive and the tail an almost-black dark gray with white spots on the tips of the outer feathers. The wings are also very dark gray with white on the

primaries Primary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the c ...

that shows as a white patch on the closed wing. The underparts are white-washed with gray on the breast and flanks. Juveniles are similar to adults,z but with an overall brown cast to the adult colors.Hart, J. A. and C. C. Rimmer (2020). White-winged Warbler (''Xenoligea montana''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.whwwar1.01 retrieved October 10, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The white-winged warbler is limited to montane regions of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In the former it is found in the Cordillera Central, Sierra de Bahoruco, and Sierra de Neiba. In Haiti it is found in the

Massif de la Hotte The Massif de la Hotte is a mountain range in southwestern Haiti, on the Tiburon Peninsula. About 2.5 million years ago, Massif de la Hotte was separated from the Massif de la Selle by a deep, wide sea channel, and formed a separate island. This r ...

on the western

Tiburon Peninsula The Tiburon Peninsula (french: Péninsule de Tiburon), or The Xaragua Peninsula, simply "the Tiburon" (''le Tiburon''), is a region of Haiti encompassing most of Haiti's southern coast. It starts roughly at the southernmost point of the Haiti-D ...

and possibly other parts of the peninsula closer to the Dominican Republic. The species inhabits several

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

types Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Typ ...

that have in common a dense understory; they include mature humid broadleaf, pine-broadleaf, pine, and karst limestone forests, as well as

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

. In elevation it ranges between , but is most numerous above .

Lifespan

The white-winged warbler has a typical lifespan of three to six years. The oldest known individual was a bird that was banded in 1998 and recaptured in 2006.

Behavior

Movement

The white-winged warbler is a year-round resident throughout its range.

Feeding

The white-winged warbler forages in vegetation at all levels of the forest. Its diet includes

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s and seeds, especially those of ''

Trema micrantha ''Trema micrantha'', the Jamaican nettletree or capulin, is a plant species native to warmer parts of the Western Hemisphere. It has been reported from Mexico, Central America, tropical South America, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola ...

''. It frequently forages in small groups and also joins

mixed-species foraging flocks A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These are ...

with other members of the family Phaenicophilidae and the

Hispaniolan spindalis The Hispaniolan spindalis (''Spindalis dominicensis'') is one of four species of bird in family Spindalidae. It is endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Taxonomy and systematics ...

(''Spindalis dominicensis'').

Breeding

The white-winged warbler's nesting season is believed to be May to July. The only known nest was found in 2004. It was a cup of moss, leaves, lichen, and other plant material lined with small fibers and placed in a vine thicket above the ground. It contained two eggs. Nothing else is known about the species' breeding biology.

Vocalization

As of late 2022,

xeno-canto xeno-canto is a citizen science project and Information repository, repository in which volunteers record, upload and annotate recordings of Bird vocalization, birdsong and bird calls. Since it began in 2005, it has collected over 575,000 sound r ...

had only two recordings of white-winged warbler vocalization; the

Cornell Lab of Ornithology The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a member-supported unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which studies birds and other wildlife. It is housed in the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Sapsucker Woods Sanctuar ...

Macaulay Library The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds. It includes more than 33 million photographs, 1.2 million audio recordings, and over two hundred thousand videos covering 96 percent of the world's bird species. There are an ever ...

had several more. The species' song is "a series of high-pitched, squeaky notes that accelerate at the end". It also makes "a low-pitched ''tseep''" and "a low-pitched chattering ''suit..suit..suit..chir..suit..suit..suit..suit..chir..chi''" calls.

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

originally assessed the white-winged warbler as Threatened but has classed it as Vulnerable since 1994. Its estimated population of 1500 to 7000 mature individuals is very fragmented and believed to be decreasing. Much of its range has been deforested, especially in Haiti. Predation by introduced

small Indian mongoose The small Indian mongoose (''Urva auropunctata'') is a mongoose species native to Iraq and northern South Asia; it has also been introduced to many regions of the world, such as several Caribbean and Pacific islands. Taxonomy ''Mangusta auropun ...

s is also suspected to have contributed to the decline.