Saturday, May 22, 2004, after spending the morning in the North Georgia Mountains, I decided to make a quick stop at Dawson Forest on the way home to look for Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora pinus). I was disappointed to find a closed sign at the entrance, but luckily, I knew that there had been at least one pair in previous years near the closed gate.

As soon as I got out of the car, I heard one singing and spotted it moving low through the open brush where it would stop regularly to inspect the underside of a leaf or throw its head back and let out its buzzy insect-like song.

The first thing I noticed was that the black line that extends from the base of the bill through the eye was too wide at the eye and got wider behind the eye instead of narrower as it should. There was also some black in the auriculars showing the outline of the face pattern more like a Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera), however it had an all yellow throat like a Blue-winged. I immediately thought of the named hybrids, but it still wasn’t right for "Lawrence’s Warbler" ("Vermivora lawrencii") which has the face and throat of Golden-winged or "Brewster’s Warbler" ("Vermivora leucobronchialis"), which has the face and throat of Blue-winged.

Other than the black in the face, all the other field marks including the song were consistent with Blue-winged Warbler. The top of the head was yellow becoming gray-green down the nape and back and then yellow-green in the rump. The wings and tail were blue-gray and it had two thin white wingbars. The throat, upper breast and belly were bright yellow and the undertail was white. The bill and eye were black and the legs were gray.

David Sibley depicts what he calls a “Rare hybrid variant adult with partial face pattern” in his book and states further that “face and throat pattern usually inherited as a unit; rarely birds show only part of the black pattern of Golden-winged”. The only difference between his drawing and this bird is the color of the wing bars which are shown as yellow in the book and are clearly white in the pictures of this bird.

Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers hybridize regularly wherever their ranges overlap. Dawson Forest is a known location for breeding Blue-winged Warblers, but is a little farther south than what Golden-winged Warblers are known to breed in Georgia.

According to the Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds, Golden-winged Warblers migrate through the Piedmont within extreme dates of 10 April to 14 May and are a rare and declining summer breeder in the mountains. Blue-winged Warblers are a rare to uncommon summer breeder in the mountains and eastern upper piedmont. Both Brewster’s and Lawrence’s Warblers have been reported in Georgia in spring within the dates of 25 April to 11 May and 27 April to 5 June respectively.

Reference:
Sibley, David A., 2000, National Audubon Society The Sibley Guide to Birds

Beaton, Giff; Sykes, Paul W. Jr.; Parrish, John W. Jr., 2003, Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds, Fifth Edition

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