Icterine Warbler
Hippolais icterina
Medium-sized warbler, light olive-brown above and yellowish below. Distinctive features include longish, daggerlike bill, long primary projection in the wings, and square tail. Told from similar Melodious Warbler by usually conspicuous pale wing panel, longer wings, and marginally shorter bill. Usually difficult to see when singing except during song flights, when long wings are apparent. Found in tall forest with oaks and birch, mixed forest, gardens, and parks. Song is fast, loud, and melodious with lots of mimicry.
Identification
A fairly big warbler with a large head, broad-based bill and long wings with a quite short square-ended tail. The upperparts are greyish-green and the underparts are uniformly light yellow. It has pale lores and a rather vague yellowish supercilium with a pale eye ring. Other distinguishing features include a panel on the folded wings formed by pale edges to the secondary feathers and tertiary feathers and the grey, sometimes bluish legs.
Taxonomy
- Scientific name
- Hippolais icterina
- Authority
- (Vieillot, 1817)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Acrocephalidae
- Genus
- Hippolais
Range and habitat
The icterine warbler is a bird of woodland rather than forest, preferring woodland edge or glades, favouring the crowns of well-spaced trees with tall undergrowth. It prefers broad-leafed trees, but may be found in conifers mixed with broad-leafed trees. It will use copses, orchards, parks, gardens, shelterbelts and tall hedges interspersed with trees. The icterine warbler has the most northerly and widespread distribution of the four Hippolais species; its breeding range extends from northern France and Norway through most of northern and eastern Europe, south as far as the northern Balkans mountains and Crimea mountains eastwards in a narrowing band to the River Ob. It has bred in Scotland recently but it is normally a passage migrant in Great Britain and Ireland. There is a 2022 record of the Icterine warbler from Gambell, Alaska, and it was also documented in the state the following year.<p>It is a migratory species and the entire population winters in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly south of the equator. It begins its southward migration from late July, peaking in early August and then returns to the breeding range in late May.
- Breeding range
- PAL : c, nc Europe to ec Russia and n Kazakhstan
- Non-breeding range
- s AF
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
Fiery-capped Manakin
Machaeropterus pyrocephalus
Small and brightly colored manakin most often found in terra firme and upland forests. Colorful male is nearly unmistakable, with its striking yellow and red crown, red-streaked underparts, and green wings. Mostly greenish female is much plainer and best identified by the faint shadow of streaking on the underparts and reddish legs. Generally an unobtrusive species, best found by its quiet and frustratingly hard to locate call, a short, high-pitched clear ‘pink’ given at regular intervals.
See-see Partridge
Ammoperdix griseogularis
Eye-catching small gamebird of barren hills and wadis in arid and semi-arid areas. Note male’s black eyebrow, white ear patch, bright orange bill, and contrasting striped flanks. Female is duller, with a much paler version of the male’s patterning. Compare with very similar Sand Partridge, which is separated by range. Territorial song of the male very similar to Sand Partridge, a slightly more rapid and higher-pitched "Hi-hi-hi-hi-…" Both partridges produce the same wing-whistle upon take off.
Surucua Trogon
Trogon surrucura
Often draws attention to its presence by its song: an ascending sequence of “kwa” notes, similar to Green-backed Trogon, but faster. Two subspecies occur in Brazil, Paraguay, and northeastern Argentina with limited geographical overlap that vary in the color of the breast and eyering; the southern one has a red belly and eyering, while the northern one has a yellow belly and eyering. The males of both subspecies have a violet-blue head and breast, a green back, and a white undertail. Females have a dull gray breast and the undertail is gray with white tips. Found in the middle to upper levels of forests and woodlands.
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