Worm-eating Warbler

Overview

Worm-eating Warbler: Medium-sized, ground nesting warbler with olive-gray upperparts and pale yellow underparts. Yellow head has black crown stripes and eye-lines. As its name suggests, it eats a steady diet of moth caterpillars and worms. It usually forages in understory vegetation and dead leaves.

Range and Habitat

Worm-eating Warbler: Breeds from southeastern Iowa, Ohio, New York, and southern New England south to northeastern Texas, central Gulf Coast states, and eastern North Carolina. Spends winters in the tropics. Dry, wooded hillsides are the preferred habitat of this species.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Worm-eating Warbler was first described in 1789 by Johann Friedrich Gmelin, a German naturalist, botanist and entomologist.
Despite its name, it only rarely, if ever, eats earthworms. Instead, it feeds mostly on caterpillars, which were once referred to as worms.
Late in incubation the female sits so tight on her nest that only touching her will flush her. Her cryptic coloring makes immobility a safe strategy.
A group of warblers has many collective nouns, including a "bouquet", "confusion", "fall", and "wrench" of warblers.

The Worm-eating Warbler has an enormous range reaching up to roughly 1.8 million square kilometers. This bird can be found in a majority of Central America and the Caribbean as well as North American areas. This species prefers forested locations in temperate and subtropical or tropical regions. The global population of this bird is estimated to be around 750,000 individuals. Currently, it is not believed that the population trends for this bird will soon approach the minimum levels that could suggest a potential decline in population. Due to this, population trends for the Worm-eating Warbler have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.