Northern Waterthrush
Parkesia noveboracensis · Warblers
Northern Waterthrush
Everglades National Park, 6 February 2026
A Northern Waterthrush on a lily pad in the Everglades in February, bobbing its rear end while it works the water's edge for insects. It breeds in the bogs and wet woods of Canada and winters in the mangroves and swamps of Florida and the tropics, always at the water.
A ground- and water-edge specialist among the warblers. Told apart from the very similar Louisiana Waterthrush mainly by voice and by finer points of flank and leg colour that are hard to pin down from a single still. This identification is a reasonable guess rather than a certain one.
Northern Waterthrush
Central Park, 21 September 2025
A Northern Waterthrush on a mossy log at the water's edge in Central Park in September, mid-swallow on something small and pale. It breeds in the bogs and wet woods of the far north and passes through Central Park for a few weeks each way, always at the edge of the water.
A warbler that behaves like a sandpiper, constantly bobbing its tail while it walks the shoreline rather than foraging up in the canopy the way most of its family does. It is not a thrush and never was; the name is for the streaked breast and the walk.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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