page_title: Kirtland's warbler
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Kirtland's warbler / Description
caption_attribution_description: Kirtland's Warbler (Dendroica kirtlandii), female
context_page_description: Kirtland's warbler, which is recorded to have been known by local folk in Michigan by the common name jack pine bird, and is also known as the jack pine warbler, is a small songbird of the New World warbler family, named after Jared Potter Kirtland, an Ohio doctor and amateur naturalist. Nearly extinct just 50 years ago, it is well on its way to recovery. It requires large areas, greater than 160 acres, of dense young jack pine for its breeding habitat. This habitat was historically created by wildfire, but today is created through the harvest of mature jack pine, and planting of jack pine seedlings.
  The population of the species spends the spring and summer in their breeding range in Ontario, Wisconsin or Michigan, especially the northeastern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and winters in The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
context_section_description: Male Kirtland's warblers have bluish-grey upper body parts, with dark streaks on the back, yellow bellies, and dark streaks on the flanks and sides. It has black lores (cheeks) and a distinctive, large and conspicuous broken white eye ring, which it only shares with Setophaga coronata. Females and juveniles are similar, but are browner on the wings and back and are not as boldly or brightly marked. It frequently bobs its tail up and down, which is uncommon in northern warblers. At 14–15 cm (5.5–5.9 in) and 12–16 g (0.42–0.56 oz), it is the largest of the numerous warblers formerly classified in the genus Dendroica. Its mating song is a loud chip-chip-chip-too-too-weet-weet often sung from the top of a snag (dead tree) or northern pin oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis) clump. This song can be heard over 400m away in good conditions. In its overwintering grounds it does not sing but makes loud "chip" noises from low in dense bushes.
  The eggs are a "delicate" pinkish white when fresh, fading to a dull white after a time. There are a few scattered sprinkles in various shades of brown and pink, these sprinkles and blotches concentrated at the top or form a sort of wreath at the larger end. The egg is not very glossy. It is 18 by 14mm in size. The shell is very thin.
caption: Female
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