In honor of seeing a pair of these little guys recently, November's Bird of the Month is the Black-Throated Blue Warbler! One of many migratory warblers that move through our area, these little birds are generally seen only in the spring and fall as they move between their nesting grounds in New England, the Appalachian Mountain range, and Southern Canada, and their winter ground in the Caribbean and Central America. A sexually dimorphic species, males are very distinctive, with blue backs, black faces and throats, and white bellies. Females are olive and tan, with small white patches on their wings and a faint white stripe over their eyes; they almost look like a completely different species unless observed with a male! Black-Throated Blue Warblers have 2 to 3 broods per summer with 2-5 eggs per brood.
They prefer nesting in thick shrubs or saplings, but do require tracts of unbroken forest for nesting, and are at risk of habitat loss because of this. These little birds primarily eat insects and can be seen foraging intensely through the understory of deciduous forests.
