Quantcast

Tropical Parula

Parula pitiayumiOrder: PASSERIFORMESFamily: Wood Warblers (Parulidae)

Tropical parula Portrait
  Copyright 2002-2007 Whatbird.com
Click here for licensing information Splitbar

General

Tropical Parula: Small warbler with blue-gray upperparts, dark black mask (usually without white eye-rings), yellow chin, throat, breast, and upper belly with a diffused orange breast band, and white lower belly and undertail coverts; wings show two white bars. Female is duller, shows only faint breast band, and lacks dark mask. Juvenile resembles female but lacks breast band.

Range and Habitat

Tropical parula: Native to Mexico and rare in southern Texas along the lower Rio Grande. Prefers thick riparian woods abundant in Spanish moss.

Listen to Call

Voice Text

"zeeeeeeee-yip", "zzzzzzzirrrrrrrrrrr"

Interesting Facts

  • The Tropical Parula has occasionally been lumped with the closely related Northern Parula as a single species.
  • This species has become quite scarce along the Rio Grande, the only part of the United States in which it nests, due to parasitism by cowbirds, the disappearance of Spanish moss, and the use of pesticides.
  • During a period in the 1960s it apparently did not nest north of the U.S.-Mexico border at all, but now a few pairs breed in certain tracts of river-bottom woods.
  • A group of warblers has many collective nouns, including a "bouquet", "confusion", "fall", and "wrench" of warblers.


Author

Jane Wright Splitbar
Range Map for Tropical parula
.
Bird database and its related content, illustrations and media is Copyright © 2002 - 2007  Whatbird.com
All rights reserved. No part of this web site may be reproduced without written permission from Mitch Waite Group.
 Privacy Policy.
Percevia® Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Bird Call Credits: The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Martyn Stewart, http://www.naturesound.org, Redmond, Washington USA. The reuse or copying of bird calls in this database is strictly forbidden.
Family
Species Parula pitiayumi
Length4 - 4.5 Inches
Wingspan7 Inches

Tropical Parula

Tropical Parula: Small warbler with blue-gray upperparts, black mask, yellow chin, throat, breast, and upper belly with a diffused orange breast band, white lower belly, undertail coverts. Blue-gray wings have white bars. Lack of a white eye ring and dark mask set it apart from the Northern Parula.

● Song: "zeeeeeeee-yip", "zzzzzzzirrrrrrrrrrr"

● Foraging & Feeding: Tropical parula: Eats bees, wasps, flies, caterpillars, and some berries.

● Breeding & nesting: Tropical parula: Three to four white eggs with brown spots at the large end, are laid in a nest of bark, moss, grass and hair, lined with feathers and set in pockets of Spanish moss or hanging on vines eight to forty feet above the ground.

● Similar species:

Flight Pattern

Weak fluttering flight with shallow wing beats. Hawks insects by flying forth to take them in air and returning to perch.
Tropical parula Body Illustration
● Range & Habitat: Tropical parula: Native to Mexico and rare in southern Texas along the lower Rio Grande. Prefers thick riparian woods abundant in Spanish moss.
BreedingMonogamous, Solitary nester
PopulationRare to uncommon
MigrationNonmigratory
Weight0.1 Ounces