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Defenders Magazine
Species Spotlight: The Cerulean Warbler
The chorus of cheerful trills coming from high in the forest canopy is hardly a song sung blue, but if this little bird knew better he might change his tune.
Named for the striking cobalt color of the male, the cerulean warbler flits and nests amid the towering canopies of the eastern deciduous forests from early spring to late summer. Only the male sings. The female has her own fascinating behavior: With wings tucked, the bird purposefully tumbles off the side of her lofty nest. Although not quite in a freefall, just before she hits the ground—like a bungee jumper on a cord—she stops short. Instead of shooting back skyward, however, her open wings whisk her along the forest floor in search of insects, including bees, caterpillars and wasps.
These migratory, 0.3-ounce birds require large, undisturbed tracts of tall trees. In the United States, clear cutting of mature forest groves for logging and mining threaten their breeding habitat. In the South American Andes, where the birds wait out winter, coffee and coca fields increasingly take the place of their forested habitat. The result: an 80 percent population decline since the late 1960s.
To keep the cerulean warbler’s numbers from plummeting even further, Defenders began pushing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add it to the endangered species list in 2000. After the agency failed to act, Defenders and other conservation groups filed a lawsuit in February—hoping to help this little bird bounce back rather than see it do a nosedive into nonexistence.
