Setophaga magnolia
What to Look
and Listen For
The typical song is
quite brief, consisting
of two or three phrases of two parts each:
a simple, clear, slurred
wheata wheata wheat-chew. The final phrase
is more accented than
the first two and contains an upslur then a
downslur but is given
at the same speed as
the first two phrases.
It is reminiscent of the
yellow, chestnut-sided,
and hooded warblers’
songs, but those songs
are generally longer.
Beware the American
redstart, which can
sound similar, but
its song is wispier
and higher-pitched
than the magnolia’s.
Viewed from below,
the magnolia war-
bler’s black-tipped tail
with its broad white
base is diagnostic.
From above, the white
panels on the sides of
the tail are also diag-
nostic. In spring, note
the black “necklace,”
with extensive streak-
ing onto the sides. In
fall, this necklace and
streaking are reduced
to a pale gray on a
bright yellow throat
and breast.
Where and When
to Look
Spring migration
starts in late April
and continues
through early June.
Fall migration is
from late August
through mid-October.
In migration, the
magnolia can and will
appear in a variety
of habitats where
significant understory
is present. It breeds
across northern
Canada (save in the
far West) in damp,
coniferous, mainly
spruce forests in the
northern part of its
range and hemlock in
the southern reaches
of its range. The
magnolia warbler
prefers young,
second-growth
conifers. In autumn,
warbler for this reason, but the
Canada lacks the side-streaking
present on the magnolia, and its
necklace is restricted primarily to
the breast. As I looked over my
older son’s and my own field notes
in preparation for this writing, I
read observations such as, “black
eye-patch like the eye-black base-
ball and football players wear,”
“yellow rump like a ‘butterbutt’”
(my sons’ preferred name for the
yellow-rumped warbler), and “it
MAGNOLIA WARBLER
has an old man’s white eyebrow!”
One might gather from these
observations that the magnolia
warbler is a bejeweled, athletic
septuagenarian with some junk in
the trunk, a humorous collection
of contrasts more apropos in an
urban setting than in a suburban
woodlot, but the magnolia warbler
is to me a rather fine collection of
nature’s fashion. Famed American
ornithologist Arthur Cleveland
Bent wrote even more admiringly
