Home » Plants & Animals » Wildscaping » Life with the Insect Eaters -- Parulas

Life with the Insect Eaters -- Parulas

© Mel. White

It is spring, and the cheerful bbezzzzzip, bzz-bzz-zzip floats through the evening air; the song of the Northern Parula warbler, high in an old pine tree beside the pond. Although it's not rare or as shy as some of the other warblers, it's still hard to spot and it takes us a few minutes of peering throubgh the binoculars to finally catch a glimpse of the little bird, looking for a bright flash of yellow in the dark green leaves. She's there, all right, pausing in her insect hunt to contemplate the strange two-leggers invading her territory.

She examines us closely for a moment and then decides she doesn't like our looks. Her white wing bars flashed as she sails away, looking for a safer haven. It's fall and she's looking for dinner on her way southward and we don't seem to be scaring up any bugs that she's interested in.

The parula is one of several sparrow - sized warblers of the Eastern United States; a bird with slate colored feathers on its back and head, bright yellow throat and chest, and white wing bars. It's common in the eastern half of North America, and its breeding range extends from southern Canada down to the Gulf. During the winter this little bird migrates thousands of miles to the tropics and winters in the West Indies, where there are plenty of insects to tide them over till the warm spring comes. The Southern Parulas start their trek early and arrive in the nesting grounds in February. Northern Parulas don't make it to their Canadian area nesting grounds till May.

Parulas are insect-eaters and spend most of their time in the woods, doing most of their bug-hunting near ponds and lakes. Once breeding season comes, they stick to areas where there's abundant lichens (Spanish moss) on the trees. Their nests are built from soft clumps of lichen and moss, and they lay a clutch of three to seven eggs - so making sure that trees in your are are not completely cleared of lichen is important for breeding habitat.