Overview

Verdin: Very small songbird with gray upperparts and pale gray underparts. Face and throat are dull yellow; eye-lines are dark. Wings are gray with red-brown shoulder patches. Black bill, legs and feet. It builds complex sphere-shaped nests using as many as two thousands small twigs.

Range and Habitat

Verdin: Resident in the deserts of southwestern North America, from southern California eastward to central Texas and southward to central Mexico. Frequents desert scrub, especially along washes where thorny vegetation is present.

Breeding and Nesting

Verdin: Three to six pale to blue green eggs with red brown speckles are laid in a nest made of sticks, leaves, and grass, held together with spider webs and cocoons, lined with grass, feathers, and plant down, and built from 2 to 20 feet above the ground in a shrubby tree, cactus, or bush. Eggs are incubated for 10 days by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Verdin: Eats insects, their larvae and eggs, spiders, berries, and fruits; forages among twigs and leaves, sometimes hanging upside down like a chickadee or titmouse.

Vocalization

Verdin: Song is a melancholy, whistled "tswee-swee, tswee", three notes with the second note higher. Call is a quick "tea-nip."

Similar Species

Verdin: Lucy's Warbler resembles juvenile Verdin, but bill is thinner, dark, and without pink-yellow base. Bushtit has smaller, blunter bill and longer tail. Gnatcatchers have longer tails with black-and-white markings.