Chestnut-Sided Warbler
Setophaga pensylvanica
About This Species
This small warbler favours shrubby second-growth woodland, forest edges, and regenerating clearings, where it gleans insects from low and mid-level foliage with quick, active movements. Breeding males show bold chestnut flanks and a yellow crown, and their bright, accelerating song is often rendered as "pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha." Late spring migration and the early summer breeding season in the northeastern and upper midwestern United States and southern Canada offer the best combination of vocal activity and accessible habitat for finding one.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- Watch and listen from a trail or clearing edge rather than pushing into dense shrub habitat, since breeding warblers can desert a nest if flushed repeatedly from a low, well-hidden site.
- Protections for migratory songbirds are broadly in place across this species' range, though enforcement and specifics differ between the United States and Canada, so treat any active nest as something to leave undisturbed rather than approach for a closer look.
- Playback of song to draw a bird in should be used sparingly if at all, since overuse can disrupt territorial behaviour during the breeding season.
Seasonal Activity
1,849,022 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Parulidae
Photo
(c) Weston Barker, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Weston Barker
CC-BY-NC-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.