Paruline rouge

Identification

The red warbler is a small passerine, measuring 12.5–13.5 cm (4.9–5.3 in) in length, and weighing from 7.6 to 8.7 g (0.27 to 0.31 oz). As an adult, it is red overall, with either a white or dark gray (depending on the subspecies) auricular patch on each side of its head. Its wings and tail are slightly darker, dusky red, and edged in pinkish-red. Its legs are a dull red-brown, and its thin bill is pinkish-gray with a dark tip. The iris is dark brown to blackish. Plumage varies little between the sexes, although the female tends to be a little duller or more orange-tinged. Adult pairs separate and molt fully from August, after the breeding season.<p>The adult red warbler is hard to confuse with any other bird species in its range; the scarlet tanager and summer tanager have similar mostly-red plumage but are larger with thick conical bills.<p>As a juvenile, the red warbler is pinkish-brown with a whitish auricular patch. Its darker wings and tail show pinkish-cinnamon edges, with two paler wingbars on the former.<p>The red warbler has several common calls, including a high, thin tsii and a stronger pseet. Its song is a mix of short trills and richer warbles, interspersed with high-pitched chips. Unlike other species in the same habitat zone, it tends to sing only during bright morning hours during the breeding season. It does not sing – and even its calling frequency decreases – in cloudy weather, regardless of season.

Taxonomie

English jeweler and naturalist William Bullock and his son traveled to Mexico soon after its independence, spending six months in 1823 collecting archaeological artifacts and many bird and fish species new to science. The bird specimens were given to naturalist William John Swainson, their countryman, to formally describe, which he did in 1827. Among these was the red warbler, which was assigned to the genus Setophaga, as Setophaga rubra. Over the next half century, other authorities moved it to Cardellina, with the red-faced warbler, and to the widespread tropical warbler genus Basileuterus, as well as to the Old World warbler genus Sylvia and the Old World tit genus Parus. In 1873, English naturalists Philip Lutley Sclater and Osbert Salvin moved the species to the genus Ergaticus, where it remained for more than a century.<p>The red warbler forms a superspecies with the pink-headed warbler of Chiapas and Guatemala. Despite their disjunct ranges and considerably different plumages, the two have sometimes been considered conspecific. Conversely, it has also been suggested that the red warbler should be split into a northern gray-eared species (C. melanauris) and a southern white-eared species (C. rubra). A comprehensive 2010 paper by Irby Lovette and colleagues analyzing mitochondrial and nuclear DNA of the New World warblers found that the red and pink-headed warblers are each other's closest relative and that their common ancestor diverged from a lineage that gave rise to the red-faced warbler. The authors recommended moving the red and pink-headed warblers to the genus Cardellina, a suggestion which has been adopted by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOC).<p>There are three subspecies, which differ slightly in appearance:<p>"Red warbler" has been designated the official name by the IOC. It is a straightforward reference to its color. The genus name Cardellina is the diminutive of the Italian cardella, a regional name for the European goldfinch, while its specific name, rubra, is Latin for "red".

Nom scientifique

Cardellina rubra

Autorité

(Swainson, 1827)

Ordre

Passériformes

Famille

Parulidés

Genre

Cardellina

Répartition et habitat

Endemic to the highlands of Mexico north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the red warbler has three disjunct populations that correspond to the three subspecies: from southwestern Chihuahua to northern Nayarit, from southern Jalisco and southern Hidalgo to Oaxaca, and from Guerrero into southern Oaxaca in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains. It is fairly common to common in the country's interior and on adjacent slopes, where it occurs at elevations ranging from 1,800 to 3,900 metres (5,900 to 12,800 ft) above sea level; it does not occur along either coast. It is an altitudinal migrant, moving from higher humid or semi-humid pine, pine-oak and fir forests in the breeding season to lower elevations, often in oak forests, in the winter. It is among the most common of the small birds in its woodland habitat, second only to the golden-crowned kinglet in fir forests in one study and the third most common warbler in oak-conifer woodlands in another.<p>Though the species was reported to have been collected in Texas in the late 19th century, the record's location was not widely believed, and there is no strong evidence that it ever occurred there. It has strayed as far north as southeastern Arizona, where a bird was found on Mount Lemmon in 2018.

Migration

Migration altitudinale

Comportement

Mode de migration: Migration altitudinale.

Conservation

Tendance de la population: en déclin.

Tendance de la population

en déclin