Pine Warbler
The Pine Warbler is the only warbler that regularly consumes significant quantities of seeds, augmenting the usual warbler diet of insects and other arthropods with berries and the seeds of pine, sumac, grass, and other herbaceous plants.

Pine Warblers are intimately tied to pines, breeding most abundantly in the pure pine forests of the Southeast, where they are resident. Migratory populations breed in pines and mixed pine-hardwood forests from Minnesota across southern Ontario and Quebec, and northern New York to Maine and eastern New England. The species is either absent, or breeding is scattered and local, across a broad band from southern Wisconsin, southern Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and southern New York.
Pine Warbler Range Map

In migration Pine Warblers are sometimes found outside of pine woods, in deciduous forests, brushy areas and occasionally even in open fields. Northern migrants augment resident populations in the southern parts of the range; nearly all of the population winters in the United States. Pine Warblers, like Yellow-rumped Warblers, are exceptionally hardy warblers. They sometimes winter along the Atlantic Coast as far as Virginia and Maryland and, rarely, even farther north, feeding at backyard suet or peanut butter feeders.

During winter Pine Warblers often join mixed species flocks, associating with Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice, as well as various woodpeckers, kinglets, Brown-headed Nuthatches and Yellow-rumped Warblers. Very large flocks may include as many as 50 to 100 Pine Warblers.

Spring migration is exceptionally early—only the Yellow-rumped Warbler arrives north as early as the Pine Warbler. In the southern parts of the range the breeding season may begin as early as February or March, while in the north nesting occurs from late April to early June. Studies of breeding biology are difficult because Pine Warblers usually build their nests 20 to 80 feet up in pine trees. Males aggressively defend territories with song and chases, even excluding sympatric Yellow-throated Warblers. The song resembles that of a Chipping Sparrow, but is more melodic and usually slower.

Description: At 5" to 5 3/4" in length, Pine Warblers are noticeably larger than most other warblers, with relatively large bills. Upperparts of males are olive green and unstreaked. The throat and breast are yellow with smudgy streaking at the sides of the breast. Females have browner upperparts and paler yellow throat and breast. Both sexes have white bellies and undertail coverts. The wings show two prominent wingbars. Tail extension past the undertail coverts is longer than in most other warblers.

Confusion with Bay-breasted and Blackpoll warblers in fall plumage is a potential identification problem. Pine Warblers appear larger and larger-billed than either species, and are further distinguished by unstreaked upperparts, longer tail extension, more white in the tail, and facial pattern. The Pine Warbler has the sides of the face sharply set off from the yellow throat and from an extension of the yellow up the sides of the neck. The facial pattern shows less contrast in Bay-breasted or Blackpoll warblers. Pine Warblers usually have more intense yellow throats and breasts and a sharper demarcation with the white bellies.


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