Blue-winged Warbler

About the Blue-winged Warbler

The blue-winged warbler (Vermivora cyanoptera) is a fairly common migratory New World warbler, 11.5 cm (4.5 in) long and weighing 8.5 g (0.30 oz). It breeds in eastern North America in southern Ontario and the eastern United States and winters in southern Central America. Its breeding range is extending northwards, where it is replacing the very closely related golden-winged warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera).

In 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus described a new species in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Certhia pinus. Linnaeus based his entry on the "pine-creeper" that had been described and illustrated by the English naturalists Mark Catesby in 1731 and George Edwards in 1760. Edwards had doubts as to whether his specimen was the same species as illustrated by Catesby and included as a footnote "On a stricter examination I think it a species different from Catesby's". Edwards' etching actually depicted a blue-winged warbler so that Linnaeus's name applied to both the pine warbler and the blue-winged warbler. In 1810 the American ornithologist Alexander Wilson redescribed the blue-winged warbler under the binomial name Sylvia solitaria... Wikipedia →