Golden-winged Warbler

 Oil on Panel, 4 x 4 inches

     The Golden-winged Warbler is a very special bird to the state of Minnesota, and that’s because Minnesota supports the highest breeding population (about half) of this bird compared to any other state or province. 

     In the summer, the greatest concentration of this warbler exists west of Duluth and Minneapolis. When I saw this bird on May 17th in Minnesota, that date coincided with the males’ average first arrival to northern Wisconsin in the springtime. My latitudinal location wasn’t far off from northern Wisconsin and it was my first time seeing this bird. 

     However, before I saw it, I heard its call. I’m not proud to write that I dismissed its call as belonging to that of the Clay-colored Sparrow. It was buzzy, and with little thought I carelessly misidentified it as the sparrow, one that I’d seen and heard many times before. But something didn’t feel right. I was hearing more than one, perhaps a handful, and all very close; so I kept trying to locate them in a thicket of shrubs around 7-8 feet high – shrubs that weren’t fully leafed out yet – but to no avail. How strange, I thought. Why couldn’t I see them? After all, spotting a bird’s silhouette on relatively naked branches seemed effortless, or so I thought. Finally, one flew across the path and landed in sight. Nope, definitely not a Clay-colored Sparrow. That’s when I got my first photograph of a Golden-winged Warbler. Its ability to camouflage itself in the willows was extraordinary. 

     These birds were singing their type I song (sung especially at dawn during mating) “zeee bee bee”. I only heard two "bees" in all songs, songs that are characterized as sibilants. Sibilants are sounds that are made by pushing air through one’s teeth and simultaneously forming the tongue to pronounce hissing sounds such as zip, ship, and tzip. The usage of sibilant sounds in birds is plentiful. A few birds that come to mind are empids, Canada Geese (think of them hissing when you get too close), Eastern Phoebes and Clay-colored Sparrows. The Barn Owl is another example with its snake-like hiss. 

   Golden-winged Warblers like to eat tortricids (a type of moth – don’t worry if you didn’t recognize that word, I didn’t either!), their pupae, and other moths and winged insects. Spiders are also a favorite, and unlike flycatchers, their food is sought after mostly on the ground by probing into rolled-up leaves versus catching them on the wing. 

     Birding magazines and newspaper articles have been sounding alarms about the health of this bird, and that’s because the Golden-winged Warbler has suffered one of the steepest population losses of any songbird species in the past 45 years. This bird has been given the unfortunate distinction as a tipping point species… birds that have lost half or more of their population in the past 50 years and are on track to lose another half of their remaining population in the next 50 years, unless something changes. And while humans have managed woodlands for efficiency and tidiness, it’s a trait opposite of what this bird needs to survive. Golden-winged Warblers need complex forests with natural disturbances, those that offer patchy habitat along with open areas for nesting and mature forest to protect fledglings from predators. 

      If you’re wondering how Minnesota is doing in regards to conservation, consider the following. The U.S. pledged to meet one of the most ambitious goals agreed to at the United Nations biodiversity conference held in December of 2022 (COP15) by “putting 30 per cent of the planet and 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.” (UNEP.org) 

     “Currently, Minnesota is well short of the goal, which it has not adopted. About 7% of Minnesota’s land and water is permanently protected, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That number rises to 18% if it includes protected areas that allow multiple uses such as logging, mining and off-road vehicle riding.” (Stanley, 2022) 

     Per the U.N. agreement, businesses across the world, especially large companies, are to gauge, monitor and reveal their impacts on biodiversity. “Specifically, the deal includes a promise to reduce the loss of ecosystems of ‘high ecological integrity’ to near zero.” (Stanley, 2022) 

     Just down the road from my house, a Marriott hotel is currently being built by Iowan developer Kinseth Hospitality smack-dab in an environmentally-sensitive area surrounded by wetlands and within feet of an impaired trout stream. Yet, Duluth’s leaders (Mayor Emily Larson and her administration), Marriott, and Kinseth bypassed the potential ecological impacts of their project, all without sitting down at the table with citizens to strategize and agree to a better site for construction.

     If you want to know how you can help, pay attention to your local government and projected developments in your area. Demand the environment comes first. We will never forgive Marriott for selecting such an important environmental area to build, nor Duluth’s leaders for allowing it.

References

Confer, J., Hartman, P. and Roth A. Golden-winged Warbler, Vermivora chrysoptera, NT, Near Threatened. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/gowwar/cur/introduction, Pub. Mar. 4, 2020. Retrieved Oct. 13, 2023. 

Golden-Winged Warbler. Living Bird, vol. 40, no. 3, Summer 2021, pp. 28-29. 

Information from the United Nations website, https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/cop15-ends-landmark-biodiversity-agreement. Retrieved Nov. 16, 2023. 

Ramanujan, Krishna. “Three Years After 3 Billion Birds Lost, America’s Birds Are Still in Decline.” Living Bird, vol. 42, no. 1, Winter 2023, p. 19. 

Stanley, Greg. “A call to save world’s species.” Star Tribune [Minneapolis], Dec. 27, 2022, A1, A8. 

Stanley, Greg. “Our Woods Save This Song.” Star Tribune [Minneapolis], Oct. 20, 2022, SH1-SH3.

Stephenson, T. and Whittle, S. (2015) The Warbler Guide. Princeton University Press.