Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

Issued on April 27, 2020, from Tepakán, Yucatán, MÉXICO
BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER

Black-and-white Warbler, MNIOTILTA VARIA, female

During eastern and central North America's summers, Black-and-white Warblers are fairly common in deciduous woods, feeding along trunks and larger branches of trees, like Brown Creepers. During North America's winters, however, Black-and-white Warblers migrate into the tropics and subtropics -- Florida and southern Texas, south throughout most of Mexico to Nicaragua. In the Yucatan often they turn up along the coasts, though here in the interior they're much less common. Since I've not seen any at the rancho until now, a good guess would be that the one shown below, a female, is migrating up from Central America, preparing to make the big hop across the Gulf of Mexico to the US Gulf Coast and beyond.

This one was amazingly tame, enabling me to get within six feet. I think her need for water was so desperate that it overcame any fear she might have had. In the picture, she's drinking from the drainage pipe emptying the outside kitchen's concrete sink. Once's she'd drunk, she bathed in a pan beneath the pipe, flew into the weeds, and enjoyed one of the most elaborate and animated preening sessions I've ever seen a bird have.