Black-throated Green Warbler

Setophaga virens · Warblers

Black-throated Green Warbler

Green-Wood Cemetery, 28 September 2025

A Black-throated Green Warbler from the side at Green-Wood in late September, a female or a young bird on its way from the Canadian spruce forests to Central America. The cemetery is one of the best places in the city to watch the autumn passage, and this species is one of the commoner ones in it.

The yellow face framed by a plain olive crown and the streaking along the flanks are the clearest sign of age or sex; a breeding male wears a solid black throat like a scarf. The song is the thing to know: a buzzy "zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee" from the treetops that is often the first sign the spruce-forest warblers have come through in May.

Black-throated Green Warbler

Green-Wood Cemetery, 28 September 2025

A Black-throated Green Warbler working a dogwood as the leaves turn at Green-Wood in late September, on its way south. Its migration runs from the spruce forests of Canada to Central America and the Caribbean, and most of it happens at night.

The absence of a solid black bib makes it a female or a young bird; the breeding male wears one like a black scarf. A great many of the small birds passing over a city in autumn are doing it in the dark, guided by stars and the earth's magnetic field, and are only visible at all when they drop into a park at dawn to feed.

Black-throated Green Warbler, female

Green-Wood Cemetery, 28 September 2025

A female or immature Black-throated Green Warbler at Green-Wood at the end of September, on its way from the spruce forests of Canada to Central America and the Caribbean, mostly flown at night. The cemetery's trees are a stopover.

The black bib the breeding male wears is reduced to a scatter of dark streaking down the flanks, the yellow face and olive back otherwise unchanged. The song is the easiest of any warbler to learn: a buzzy "zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee", sung all summer from the top of a conifer.