The male Blackburnian Warbler wears a throat so intensely orange it looks lit from within — a flame-colored blaze across the face and throat, framed by bold black markings and set against a striped black-and-white body. No other warbler in Michigan glows like it, and catching that orange high in a dark hemlock or spruce is one of the great rewards of spring migration. Females and fall birds are a softer yellow-orange but share the distinctive face pattern.
This is a treetop specialist, foraging high in mature conifers where its thin, wiry, ascending song floats down almost too high to hear. Blackburnian Warblers breed in the mature coniferous and mixed forests of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, favoring stands with hemlock and spruce, and pass through the rest of the state as migrants. Long-distance travelers, they winter in the mountain forests of South America, making their brief Michigan summer all the more prized.
Gleans caterpillars, insects, and spiders from the outer foliage and twigs high in conifers and tall deciduous trees, sometimes hovering to pluck prey or catching insects in short flights. During spruce budworm outbreaks it feeds heavily on the caterpillars, and its numbers can rise with them.
Blackburnian Warblers stay in the tops of tall conifers, so scan the upper canopy and listen for the very high, thin, rising song. The flaming orange throat of the male, when it catches the light, is unmistakable.
In mature coniferous and mixed forests, especially those with hemlock and spruce, in the northern Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula. In southern Michigan it is a spring and fall migrant.
The intense orange throat helps males advertise for mates and defend territory high in the canopy, where a vivid signal stands out against dark conifer foliage. Females are duller, which helps camouflage them at the nest.
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