In August, as children prepare to migrate back into the classroom, warblers must also get ready for a long journey.
After spending the springtime in the evergreen and deciduous forest of Canada and northern United States, warblers start to move south.
The small birds are easily detectable by their unique, high-pitched songs. More than 18 species of warblers nest in Missouri, and another 22 species pass through Missouri during migration. The rare cerulean warbler, whose plumage is varying shades of striking blues, nests along the heavily-forested floodplains of Ozark rivers and streams.
While they chow down on insects using their tweezer-like bills, the fat is stored as energy to be used on the journey south.
As these weary travelers make their way through, try to spot them by keeping an eye and an ear out.
Feeling Blue: Cerulean Warbler
- Cerulean warblers are and imperiled in our state, and listed as a “watch list species” by the Missouri Department of Conservation. A summer resident, it is more common in the southeastern Ozarks but is rare elsewhere in the state. Its total numbers in the Western Hemisphere are small and declining, and for that reason our nation may soon classify it as Endangered.
- Its blue color makes it hard to see against the sky, providing a challenge to birders, who recognize it first for its distinctive buzzy voice, then hunt for it with binoculars. Seen or unseen, it spends its days snatching thousands of insects humans find bothersome.
- Most warblers specialize in eating insects from the bark of tree trunks and branches. Like woodpeckers, these birds help check populations of wood-eating insects that might otherwise cause great harm to our forest trees.
- Because the cerulean warbler often remains concealed in foliage high in the forest canopy, it is usually best identified its voice, a rapid series of buzzy notes on one pitch, with a rising “zeeeeee” at the end. The call is a sweet “chip.”
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