Verdin

Verdin

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.

● Song: "tswee-swee, tswee", "tea-nip"

● Foraging & 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.

● Breeding & 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.

● 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.

Flight Pattern