CAPE MAY WARBLER Dendroica tigrina (Gmelin, 1789)

Accepted: 8 (100%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 0	CBRC review: records from 1972 through 19741
Not submitted/reviewed: NA	Color image: none

This spruce specialist’s northern breeding limit extends from the southwestern Northwest Territories, extreme southeastern Yukon, and northeastern British Columbia east to southwestern Newfoundland. The southern limit extends from northern Minnesota east to northern New York and Nova Scotia. Migration is mainly through Florida, and the species is very rare along the coast of the western Gulf of Mexico. The primary wintering grounds are in the northern West Indies, and the species winters rarely to uncommonly elsewhere in and around the Caribbean Sea, from coastal southern Florida south to Honduras and east to Bermuda. The species has been found casually in winter elsewhere in the United States, the Lesser Antilles, and northern South America. Migrants and wintering birds occur casually in the West, from northern Alaska south to Baja California Sur and the Islas Revillagigedo, and along the Pacific slope of Middle America to El Salvador. The species is accidental in Great Britain.

California’s first Cape May Warbler was a first-fall male collected on 23 September 1924 at “Potholes” [Laguna Dam] in Imperial County (Huey 1926, SDNHM 33293). The state has since accumulated more than 200 records, about 70% in fall (9 September–7 December, peaking in October) and 20% in spring (16 May–30 June, peaking in early June), with a number of winter records, especially along the southern coast. As with the Bay-breasted Warbler, the Cape May’s numbers increase during outbreaks of the Spruce Budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana), leading to an increased incidence of vagrancy; both of these warblers have occurred less frequently in California since around 1980, largely as a function of less frequent budworm outbreaks (Patten and Burger 1998).

¹On the review list 1972–1976