On 23 May Gary Rosenberg heard an ABA Code-4 Fan-tailed Warbler (Euthlypis lachrymosa) singing (a series of sweet notes ending in an up-slur or a down-slur) in Madera Canyon downhill from the Kubo Lodge. It has been seen and photographed by many. (Recently the AOU Check-list Committee voted to abolish the Dendroica warbler genus and move them into new and existing genera. In the same move, the Euthlypis genus was merged into the large, mostly tropical, Basileuterus genus so in late July expect Fan-tailed Warbler to be reassigned as Basileuterus lachrymosa. A tear is shed).
Photograph is courtesy of Brian Gibbons.
The large warbler, Euthylpis (Basileuterus) lacrymosa, has only been reported a few times in the ABA Area, mostly in Arizona, but with one record from Big Bend National Park, TX, in late summer 2007. This unique warbler is endemic to Mexico and northern Central America (northwestern Mexico, Sonora and southern Tamaulipas, south to western Nicaragua). There is also a record from Baja California (Warblers, Dunn and Garrett). The northern populations are migratory (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition). With its distinctive broken white eye ring and white loral spot, the facial pattern to some appears as a bird shedding a tear, thus the name lacrymosa. The appropriate common name, fan-tailed, comes from this bird often pumping its tail up-and-down and moving it from side-to-side as it walks along the ground.
There was also a Fan-tailed Warbler at the Melrose Trap in NM on 19-20 May 2009.
Posted by: Andrew Core | May 25, 2011 at 01:18 AM