Northern Parula

The Northern Parula is one of our smallest warblers, and among the most colorful. Rather than bold patches of orange or yellow however, the parula is a more subtle blend of blue-gray, green, and bright yellow, accented in males by bold black and rusty bands across its breast. Female and fall birds are duller but still colorful. The song is a distinctive rising buzz that cuts off at the end. It comes in two basic versions, a continuous trill that can’t be mistaken for anything else and one broken into smaller parts that recalls a Black-throated Blue or Cerulean Warbler.

Parulas have a somewhat unusual range consisting of two sections separated by an unoccupied area stretching from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic states. In both sections they use a wide range of forests, from purely deciduous to purely coniferous, but a key component in all cases is the presence of hanging plants in which the warblers build their nests. In the southeast this role is filled by Spanish moss, and Northern Parulas can be abundant in the most-draped bottomlands from Louisiana to the Carolinas. Up here in New England and across the forest to the west into Canada they frequently use “old man’s beard” lichen, although other masses of hanging material also serve their needs. The nest itself is built into a hollowed-out portion of the moss or lichen, with access via an opening in the side. In this manner they recall an oriole nest, but luck is needed to find one when their habitat is festooned with possible nesting sites.

In winter most parulas head to the Caribbean, with a few remaining in southern Florida. Released from their need for hanging plants, they use almost all forest types from mangroves to mountaintops and can be one of the most common species in dry forests of the Greater Antilles. Researchers studying the wintering warblers in Puerto Rico were among the first to raise the alarm about declining populations of migratory birds, including the Northern Parula. Over that same time frame, however, numbers have generally been increasing on the breeding grounds. This is particularly true in the Northeast, where populations have roughly doubled since the late 1990s and the species is gradually expanding its range southward into central New Hampshire.