Overview

Northern Parula: Small, compact warbler with blue-gray upperparts and bronze-green back patch. Throat and breast are yellow, breast band is chestnut-brown and black, belly and undertail coverts are white. White eye-ring is broken. Wings are blue-gray with two white bars. Tail is noticeably short.

Range and Habitat

Northern Parula: Breeds from southeastern Canada to the Gulf coast and winters from southern Florida southward into the tropics. Preferred breeding habitat includes wet, chiefly coniferous woods, in swamps, and along lakes and ponds. More widespread during migration.

Breeding and Nesting

Northern Parula: Three to seven white eggs with brown flecks and splotches are laid in a basket-shaped nest woven from grass, bark, and vegetable fibers, and neatly hidden in Spanish moss in the south or in beard moss or Usnea lichens in the north. Incubation ranges from 12 to 14 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Northern Parula: Feeds on spiders, caterpillars, beetles, moths, ants, wasps, bees, flies, locusts, scale insects, plant lice, lacewings, and mayflies. Commonly gleans tips of foliage, small twigs, and branches high in the canopy; occasionally hovers or hangs upside-down on foliage, and sallies for aerial insects.

Readily Eats

Sugar Water, Fruit, Nut Pieces

Vocalization

Northern Parula: Song is a simple, rising, buzzing trill ending in a short, separate note. A less frequent and more complex song consists of a slower series of buzzing notes. Call is a clear, sweet "chip" and downward "tseep."

Similar Species

Northern Parula: Yellowthroats and Mourning warblers lack wing-bars. Tropical Parula lacks black on breast band and has blacker face; female and juvenile lack broken eye-rings and have more yellow on underparts.