Tropical Parula

Overview

Tropical Parula: Small warbler with blue-gray upperparts, black mask, yellow chin, throat, breast, and upper belly with a diffused orange breast band, white lower belly, undertail coverts. Blue-gray wings have white bars. Lack of a white eye ring and dark mask set it apart from the Northern Parula.

Range and Habitat

Tropical parula: Native to Mexico and rare in southern Texas along the lower Rio Grande. Prefers thick riparian woods abundant in Spanish moss.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Tropical Parula has occasionally been lumped with the closely related Northern Parula as a single species.
During a period in the 1960s it apparently did not nest north of the U.S.-Mexico border at all, but now a few pairs breed in certain tracts of river-bottom woods.
This species has become quite scarce along the Rio Grande, the only part of the United States in which it nests, due to parasitism by cowbirds, the disappearance of Spanish moss, and the use of pesticides.

A group of warblers has many collective nouns, including a "bouquet", "confusion", "fall", and "wrench" of warblers.

The Tropical Parula has a large range, estimated globally at 8,400,000 square kilometers. Native to the United States and Mexico, this bird prefers subtropical or tropical shrubland, grassland, or forest ecosystems. The global population of this bird is estimated at 5,000,000 to 50,000,000 individuals and does not show signs of decline that would necessitate inclusion on the IUCN Red List. For this reason, the current evaluation status of the Tropical Parula is Least Concern.