Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This strikingly beautiful bird with its snappy little tune spends most of its time at eye level in understory vegetation, yet can be frustratingly difficult to see in the thick foliage. It catches much of its insect food on the wing, often darting out into the open momentarily, but even as it snatches an insect in midair, it’s flitting back into the foliage. Canada Warblers feed on spiders and caterpillars as well as the moths, flies, mosquitoes, and other flying insects that make up much of its diet.

Females are more dully colored than males but also sing. Intriguingly, as with many other species in which females sing, Canada Warblers appear to be monogamous not just through the breeding season but also during migration and winter.

Canada Warblers are long distance migrants, wintering in northern South America and breeding in central and eastern Canada and, in the United States, in the Great Lakes and Northeast regions and into the Appalachian Mountains as far south as Georgia’s northern border.