Family: Parulidae, Wood Warblers view all from this family

Description 4 1/2" (11 cm). Sexes similar, mostly bright yellow with blue-gray wings, 2 white wing bars, and black line through eye. Greenish back and tail.

Habitat Abandoned fields and pastures grown up to saplings; forest clearings and edges with clumps of catbrier, blackberry, and various bushes and young trees.

Nesting 5 brown-dotted white eggs in a grass-lined cup of dead leaves and fibers, placed on or very near the ground in thick undergrowth.

Range Breeds from Nebraska, central Iowa, southern Wisconsin, southern Ontario, and central New England south through east-central and Atlantic Coast states to northern Georgia. Winters in tropics.

Voice   Insect-like buzzy song, which sounds like a tired sigh, seee-bzzz, the bzzz pitched lower.

Discussion This warbler perches motionless for minutes at a time when uttering its song. It frequently hybridizes with its close relative the Golden-winged Warbler. Where the ranges of the two species overlap, the Blue-winged is crowding out the Golden-winged.