The bright face of the Red-faced Warbler can glow like a gem against its contrasting black crown and pale gray breast. Both males and females share this color pattern, though the females are slightly duller.
Red-faced Warblers arrive to breed in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico in April and May from their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America.
In 1993 a surprised birdwatcher spotted a Red-faced Warbler just west of Denver, Colorado, hundreds of miles north of what was thought to be the limit of its range. Was this an example of a range shift due to climate change? Possibly, but scientists are doing more bird surveys than before, and may be detecting Red-faced Warblers where they had gone previously unnoticed.
These birds live in an elevation band between about three thousand and ten thousand feet in mixed pine and oak woodlands along steep-sided stream drainages. There, they build nests on the ground, hidden in the shadows beneath clumps of vegetation.
When not in the nest, the bird scours the foliage of oaks and conifers, snapping up nutritious butterfly larva and other insects for its nestlings. The Red-faced Warbler’s habitat and food requirements limit it to a small sliver of the world, but even there it faces challenges like wildfires that can char the plant communities it needs and destroy its nests.
For millions of years this colorful little bird has been a tenacious survivor, brightening the forests it inhabits with its vermilion beauty.
This Earth Note was written by Elizabeth Blaker and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
