Bachman’s Warbler Vermivora bachmanii

While we are on the this topic (Warbeler’s) Bachman’s Warbler ‘s last confirmed breeding was in 1937, and it has not been reported since 1988. It may have gone extinct as a result of habitat destruction both on the breeding and wintering grounds.

Description: Delicate warbler with slender, decurved bill. Adult male, black forecrown, grey hind-crown and nape, yellow forehead, eye-ring, lores, supercilium and throat. Yellow underparts with black patch on upper breast and white undertail. Olive-green upperparts, grey wings with olive fringes and yellow lesser coverts, grey tail with white spots on inner webs of all but central rectrices.
Voice: Song a buzzy, pulsating, insect-like trill, sometimes given in song flight. Call a low, hissing zee e eep.
Voice: 12 cm.

Distribution and population:  Vermivora bachmanii is known to have bred in Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama and South Carolina, USA, and there are breeding-season records from various other south-east states. Birds wintered in Cuba and occasionally Florida, USA. The last nest was found in 1937, but there have been recent (unconfirmed) sightings⁴. Small areas of suitable habitat remain, and the species may still survive.

The Cerulean Warbler

My wife was reading reading a novel by Jonathan Franzen called “Freedom”, at one point in the novel he author mentions that “Cerulean Warbler” was extinct.

I took note and did some hard research (had a quick look on the web to see if that was the case) and found this bit of interesting information in Wikipedia.

I’ll have to investigate further in the near future…

The Cerulean Warbler is the fastest declining neotropical migrant songbird. Among the many threats they face, their wintering habitat in the northern Andes is dwindling rapidly. Cerulean Warblers depend on shade coffee plantations during the winter. This traditional farming technique is at risk as coffee prices fluctuate and pressure to switch to higher-yield sun coffee or other crops intensifies. In fragmented forest areas, this bird is vulnerable to nest parasitism by the Brown-headed Cowbird. This bird’s numbers are declining faster than any other warbler species in the USA; its population nowadays is less than one-fifth of what it was 40 years ago [1]. The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is working with its Colombian partner, Fundación ProAves, to protect wintering habitat for Cerulean Warblers and other migrating songbirds. Together they have created the Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve, the first protected area created for a neotropical migrant. In an effort to advance protection of the Cerulean Warbler, ABC and its South American partners (Fundacion ProAves, ECOAN and Fundacion Jocotoco), in 2009 produced a Cerulean Warbler Wintering Ground Conservation Plan.