Nashville Warbler

How to find it

Check mixed-species flocks, since this warbler often travels in the middle of them on its wintering grounds. Listen for its persistent contact calls, especially the high, quick, upslurred pink, to locate it in the canopy. Search shrubby tangles and regrowing forest rather than intact forest. Watch for a small bird teetering on the tips of leaves and branches as it forages. Once you have a gray-headed warbler in view, confirm the white eye ring and the yellow belly.

How to recognise it

Look for a gray head with a white eye ring, a green back, and yellow on the throat, breast and belly. The eye ring is complete and stands out against the gray hood, which gives the bird a big-eyed look.

Males and females look much alike. Males do not change color much in the nonbreeding season, so the bird can be identified year-round.

A small patch of reddish feathers on the crown gives the bird its Latin name. It is usually hidden among the gray head feathers, so do not rely on it in the field.

Check the underparts closely. A Nashville has a white lower belly between a yellow breast and yellow undertail coverts.

What it sounds like

Recording: kristinpiston, CC0 1.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The Nashville Warbler picks insects from the lower parts of trees and shrubs and often flicks its tail. It teeters on the tips of leaves and branches while it searches for food. In winter it also takes berries and nectar.

On the wintering grounds it forms loose flocks and sometimes joins mixed-species feeding flocks, so those flocks are worth checking. It is often at the center of large mixed flocks, where its persistent contact calls help birders locate it in the forest canopy.

Where it lives

Range-wide, it likes shrubby tangles and regrowing forest. It is never found in intact forest, though in winter it uses many kinds of habitat.

Most Nashville Warblers winter in central and southern Mexico, and Costa Rica lies at the far southern edge of the wintering range. Records here are scattered across very different places, from the Pacific coast at Chomes in Puntarenas, a site at 5 m elevation, to the Central Valley and the Cartago area.

When to see it

Range-wide, it leaves its breeding grounds from October and returns north in March; this is general migration timing, not specific to Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, two birds in the Central Valley on 2 October 2007 show that an early autumn arrival is possible, and a winter-season report cites a bird in February.

Similar birds

Tennessee Warbler has a dark eyeline and a whitish belly, and it is a more regular migrant in Costa Rica, so check the belly and eye ring. Orange-crowned Warbler, a rare visitor, is duller yellow with no eye ring. Check the undertail: yellow coverts mean Orange-crowned or Nashville, white ones mean Tennessee. MacGillivray's Warbler is extremely rare in Costa Rica, so a gray-headed warbler with an eye ring is more likely a Nashville.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans know it as Reinita Cachetigrís, the same name used in Panama and Puerto Rico. In Mexico it goes by names such as chipe cabeza gris.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list gives its status as M, a migrant, and in practice it is a rare winter visitor, while globally it is rated Least Concern with a decreasing population.