Three special understory warblers

I recently ran across the following images while doing archival and curation of my photos. All of them were made at the same locations and on the same day, May 1, 2022. The site was a remote locale in the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia.

A Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina) tees up in a fascicle of Great Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) leaves. This site was quite warbliferous and I photographed a few species at this very spot. One of them is the second most coveted species of eastern warbler, but it can't hold a candle to the Hooded Warbler in the looks department. Hooded Warblers certainly breed in and around rhododendrons but occur in a variety of woodland understory habitats.

A male Black-throated Blue Warbler (Setophaga caerulescens) peeks from a rhododendron snarl, a favored breeding habitat in the Appalachian Mountains. This one is near the southern limits of the species' breeding range, in southern West Virginia. He little resembles the plain brown female, and early on males and females were considered separate species. Eastern Hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis) often co-occur with Great Rhododendron, and I think this warbler species is more connected to that tree rather than the rhododendrons. Next photo is of the most coveted warbler in this habitat, even if it is the drabbest.

Here's the third warbler of my Appalachian rhododendron thicket series. And the most coveted, the Swainson's Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii). By numbers, it's the second rarest eastern warbler. Only the Kirtland's warbler is fewer in number. About 140,000 Swainson's warblers are thought to still exist. As a point of comparison, the most abundant warbler, the yellow-rumped warbler, has around 170 million individuals. The monotypic Swainson's warbler (only species in the genus Limnothlypis) favors two distinct habitat types: rhododendron thickets, and cane breaks (Arundinaria gigantea).

Interestingly, an apparently unmated male spent much of last summer in Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County, Ohio. The site is not too terribly far from West Virginia nesting populations, but breeding has never been documented in Ohio. I made a visit to see it last June and was surprised to find the largest wild stand of giant cane I've seen in Ohio nearby. Coincidence? Maybe, but it'll be interesting to see if Swainson's warblers return to this locale. Note the bird's huge toes. All the better to forage on the ground, in dense leafy detritus.