Golden-cheeked Warbler

How to find it

Treat any sighting as a bonus. Winter birds usually travel in mixed flocks of warblers, so checking warbler flocks in highland oak forest is the likely approach. Shade-coffee farms in the highlands are worth a look for strays. One Costa Rican guide also checks groves of introduced trees on the road up Poás Volcano, hoping for rare vagrants, though he does not say this species has been seen there. Listen for a buzzy song ending in a sharper chip and for a flat tsip call. When you find a black-and-yellow warbler, check the face pattern carefully before you decide what it is.

How to recognise it

The male is striking: bright yellow cheeks contrast with a black throat and a black back. A black stripe runs through the eye and separates the yellow areas on the side of the head.

A Costa Rican warbler guide describes the adult male the same way, with a yellow face and a black line through the eye.

That eye stripe is the detail to check first. It splits the yellow of the face into separate patches, and it helps you separate this species from the other black-and-yellow Setophaga warblers on the Costa Rica list. The general colour is not enough, so look at cheek, eye line and throat together before you decide.

What it sounds like

Recording: Cody Stricker, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

On its wintering grounds the Golden-cheeked Warbler often joins mixed flocks, usually made up of other warblers, so working through a warbler flock is the best way to find a single bird. It feeds mostly on insects and spiders, and it likes to feed in oaks, even where pines dominate the forest. In the breeding range it is found mostly by its song. These are range-wide habits, and a stray in Costa Rica may behave differently.

Where it lives

On its winter grounds it prefers mountain pine or pine-oak forest, and it also uses lower montane wet forest. The usual winter range is the highlands of southern Mexico (Chiapas), Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The species nests only in central Texas.

Costa Rica is not part of the normal winter range, so there is no regular habitat to point to here. A published Costa Rican record came from a shade-coffee plantation in the highlands of Alajuela, which shows that highland farmland can host a stray.

When to see it

Spanish sources call it a wanderer in Costa Rica but give no months. A Costa Rica birding writer says rare and vagrant species can show up in almost any month, but November and December seem the best time for lost birds. That is general advice about vagrants, not specific to this warbler.

Similar birds

It belongs to a group of similar black-and-gold warblers with buzzy songs: Hermit, Townsend's and Black-throated Green. All three are on the Costa Rica list. The Black-throated Green is the one regularly seen in Costa Rica in winter, so it is by far the likelier answer. Check the face pattern carefully, and look for the black line through the eye on a yellow face.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans and Panamanians call it Reinita Caridorada. In Mexico it is Chipe Caridorado, and in Nicaragua it is Reinita Cachetidorada or Reinita Pechinegra.

Status and conservation

The official Costa Rican list marks it M-SC, a migrant with an uncertain record and no voucher specimen, and it is globally Endangered.

Photography tips

A stray is most likely to be found by checking warbler flocks in highland oak forest, since winter birds usually travel in mixed flocks. Once you find a black-and-yellow warbler, take time to frame the face, because the eye stripe and cheek pattern are what separate it from its look-alikes.