Black-whiskered Vireo

How to find it

A close, clear look at the head is needed to confirm one in Costa Rica. Check every Red-eyed or Yellow-green Vireo for the thin black whisker beside the throat. Note the more strongly hooked bill and the browner back as supporting clues. Singing can also give it away, though it probably stays quiet here. The Caribbean coast is where the few records have come from, so that is where a visitor would have the best chance, though any sighting would be a stray and a lucky find.

How to recognise it

This is a small bird, about 14 to 15 cm long and 17 to 19 g.

Upperparts: olive-green. Underparts: white with yellowish flanks. Bill: stout, and more strongly hooked than a Red-eyed Vireo's. Back: browner and duller than a Red-eyed's.

The head tells the story. The crown is gray with a dark lower edge, there is a white eyebrow stripe, a dark line runs through the eye, and a thin black whisker follows the throat. In good light the eye looks reddish. Young birds look like adults, but their eyes are a brownish red instead of the clear red of adults.

The whisker is the clearest way to separate it from a Red-eyed Vireo, but it is not always easy to see. It can be bold or faint, and immatures may lack it, so those birds look nearly identical to Red-eyed.

What it sounds like

Recording: Noah Frade, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Across its normal range it forages slowly and deliberately in the canopy. It picks fruit and insects from the outer branches and sometimes hovers to take fruit. It eats more fruit than other vireos in its range.

In the West Indies it sings monotonously through the day, in short, melodious phrases of two or three syllables. Migrants sing on the breeding grounds and stay silent on the wintering grounds, which may help explain why one in Costa Rica is so seldom noticed. Northern birds migrate at night, which helps explain how a few can be carried off course to places such as Costa Rica.

Where it lives

Its normal range is southern Florida, the Bahamas, the Antilles, Providencia and San Andrés, and northern South America. Costa Rica lies outside that range, so birds seen here are strays.

In the Caribbean it prefers dry limestone forest and moist lowland forest over mangroves, while in Florida it is mostly a mangrove bird. In its breeding range it also uses open wooded areas with deciduous trees, and farmland. The few Costa Rican records have come from the Caribbean coast.

When to see it

Fall migration passes mainly in August and September, and in those months the species regularly shows up along the Caribbean coast of Central America. That is range-wide timing, not a Costa Rican record.

Similar birds

The Red-eyed Vireo is almost identical, and the very common Yellow-green Vireo is mixed up with it too. The Yellow-green Vireo is in Costa Rica only between late January and late October, which helps in thinking about which vireo you may be seeing. The Chivi Vireo has not been documented in Costa Rica but is possible, looks like a Red-eyed Vireo and is closely related to the Black-whiskered.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica the Spanish name is vireo bigotudo, and Costa Rican name lists also give vireo vigotudo. Elsewhere it goes by other names, such as bien-te-veo in Cuba, julián chiví in the Dominican Republic, verderón canoro in Colombia and julián chiví bigotinegro in Venezuela.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list places it in category A, and in Costa Rica it is described as a rare vagrant that is likely overlooked among its look-alikes.