Figure 272. California records of the Blue-winged Warbler have increased in parallel with expansion of the species’ range in the East. Contributing to the trend was this first-fall female, photographed on 26 September 1995 at Galileo Hill, Kern County (1995-092; Jon L. Dunn).

 

Figure 395. Comparison of the number of records of the Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers, 1954–2003. California records of the Blue-winged have increased in step with the species’ expansion in the East, but records of the Golden-winged have not decreased proportionally to the declines in its population. Annual occurrence of these species is uncorrelated.

 

Figure 396. The Blue-winged Warbler is mainly a spring vagrant to California, peaking between mid May and late June, but it has also occurred 14 times as an early fall vagrant, peaking between early September and mid October. Most exceptional was a first-winter male present from 2 January to 7 March 1993 in Ferndale, Humboldt County.

 

Figure 397. Distribution of 35 Blue-winged Warblers accepted through 2003. Nearly a third come from eastern Kern County, an area that holds a similarly strong affinity for Kentucky Warblers (see that account).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLUE-WINGED WARBLER Vermivora pinus (Linnaeus, 1766)

Accepted: 35 (74%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 12	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 4	Large color photo: see Figures

Dramatic northward expansion of this warbler’s breeding range during the past century has coincided with, and perhaps contributed to, precipitous declines in the Golden-winged Warbler (e.g., Confer 1992, Gill et al. 2001); Gill (2004) reviewed the complex relationship between these sister taxa (see also the following account of hybrids). The Blue-winged Warbler’s northern breeding range currently extends from southeastern Minnesota to extreme southern Maine. The southern limit extends from northeastern Oklahoma (casually) to northern Alabama, and from there east and north to Maryland on the Atlantic coast. The species winters primarily on the Atlantic slope of Middle America, from southeastern San Luis Potosí south to central Panama, and rarely on the Pacific slope from Oaxaca south. This is a rare migrant and very rare wintering bird in the West Indies. Extralimital records are scattered across the United States and southern Canada, some involving wintering birds or very late fall migrants (e.g., Dunn and Garrett 1997). Close to California, a bird present from 13 to 28 March 1999 in Tucson, Arizona (Rosenberg 2001), probably wintered there. Peripheral vagrant records include those from southern portions of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as well as northern Ontario, northwestern Washington (one in fall), Oregon (one each in spring and fall, and an adult male present from 24 July to 29 September 2000 in the central part of the state), northwestern Baja California (two in fall, NAB 59:155), northern Colombia, and Ireland (Wing 2000).

California’s first Blue-winged Warbler was a year-old male collected on 16 June 1954 at Wyman Canyon in Inyo County (Miller and Russell 1956). After just one more record in the next 29 years, the rate of detection picked up markedly starting in 1983, an abrupt status change that has not been accompanied by any obvious waning of the Golden-winged Warbler’s rate of occurrence in the state (Figure 395). Spring vagrants (9 May–27 June) outnumber those in fall (31 August–4 October) by nearly 3:2 (20:14). A remarkable four out of every five records (28 of 35) involve birds seen for only a day. A first-winter male present from 2 January to 7 March 1993 in Ferndale, Humboldt County, provided the state’s sole winter record. See also Appendix H.

Unlike with most other vagrant warblers from the East, fewer than half of California’s Blue-winged Warblers (16 of 35) have been found along the coast (Figure 397). The oases of eastern Kern County claim a whopping 11 of the 19 interior records.

Go to: Blue-winged x Golden-winged Warbler