Species Profile: Prairie Warbler
Photo by Charles J. Sharp—Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47489212
By Cloe Chunn
The prairie warbler is a recent immigrant to Maine, having spread north as conditions warm. Its avenue has been power line cuts, which resemble its habitat of dry brushy clearings, forest margins and pine barrens. “Prairie” is a bit of a misnomer, first documented by Wilson in a Kentucky barrens locally called “prairie.”
The conspicuous male, if tiny birds can be called conspicuous, hops around on bushes growing up in the power line, singing a distinctive song, which is a series of fluid, ascending buzzes, “Zee-zee-zee-zee-zee-zee.”
The male has a yellow breast and throat and black streaks on its breast and eye area. His back and the top of his head are olive, with a rusty patch near the nape of his neck. The female is less showy. They nest in tree forks and limbs, a small cup nest sometimes parasitized by cowbirds. They hawk insects on the wing and feed their nestlings caterpillars.
Some prairie warblers nest and raise their young in Maine in spring and summer, flying south to winter in Florida and the Caribbean. I have observed them in February all through the mangroves of the Everglades.
On the Hills to Sea Trail in Belfast, prairie warblers have been seen on the two power line crossings between the Oak Hill Road train station and East Waldo Road.
