Hooded Warbler

Chipe Encapuchado

Setophaga citrina

Where and when to see the Hooded Warbler

Draft

On the Yucatán Peninsula

In winter it lives low down in the forest understorey and in second growth. A loud chip and the white flash of its tail give it away.

2–45–1920–99100+reports per ~10 km square

From September to April

Reports relative to effort

Data: eBird and other datasets via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0), 2015–2026 · Base map: Natural Earth

Identification: A small warbler, olive-green above and bright yellow below. The male’s yellow face is framed by a black hood and throat. Females vary from a plain olive cap to an almost full hood. Both flash white spots on the outer tail feathers.
Voice: The song is a clear, ringing “tawee-tawee-tawee-tee-o”. In winter both sexes give a loud, sharp chip as they defend their feeding territories.

Draft

Flashing to hunt
As it forages it keeps flicking its tail open, flashing large white spots. The flash startles flying insects into the open so the bird can chase them; in an experiment, birds with temporarily darkened tail spots attacked prey less often. ^1,2
Not always the male
Not every bird with a black hood is a male. Young females have little or no black, but older females range from plain-headed birds to ones with a hood almost identical to the male’s. ^1,3
He takes the forest, she takes the scrub
In winter on the Yucatán Peninsula, males and females each defend their own feeding territory, but in different places: males mostly in tall, closed forest, females in lower, more open scrub and second growth. Birds of the World calls it the first documented case of this kind of habitat split by sex. ^1,4
Bucking the trend
Unlike many migrant songbirds, it is doing well: its global population has roughly doubled since the 1970s and its breeding range is spreading north, probably helped by climate change. ¹

Birds of the World (Cornell Lab): Hooded Warbler (opens in a new tab)
Mumme 2023, Proc. R. Soc. B 290: 20231752 (opens in a new tab)
Audubon Field Guide: Hooded Warbler (opens in a new tab)
Lynch et al. 1985, The Auk 102(4): 714–721 (opens in a new tab)
BirdLife International, Data Zone: Hooded Warbler (opens in a new tab)
Map and months: 13,323 records from 2015–2026 from eBird, iNaturalist, and others, via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0), in 0.1° squares (about 10 km). eBird: doi.org/10.15468/aomfnb.
Months: the species’ records ÷ all bird records that month, scaled to the busiest month. It allows for birding effort; it is not the chance of seeing it. A blank square: few or no reports, not necessarily absent.

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