Prairie Warbler (Dendroica discolor)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

      Upland Brush
      or Savanna
      or Coastal Dunes

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: In Michigan, the Prairie Warbler is actually a Shrub Upland Warbler. Three distinct shrubby habitats have been used in recent decades. One is early successional stages of Great Lakes dunelands where deciduous or coniferous bushes are intermixed with dune grass and other herbs. The second habitat is jack pine plains burnt a decade or two earlier, like the habitats used by Kirtland's Warbler. The third is recently burnt areas of the former pineries but now dominated by deciduous shrubs and small trees, the habitat of Chestnut-sided Warbler, Field Sparrow, and Clay-colored Sparrow. Nesting habitats generally have poor, dry, sandy soil.

All the nests that I have found were placed in low trees or bushes (one in bracken fern), though Nolan found some nests higher up. A variety of species are used, including beaked and American hazelnut, jack pine, ground juniper, red pine, willow, and nine-bark. The nest is thick-walled, constructed of bark, other plant materials, and spider silk, and lined with fine grasses and sometimes hair.

Habitat: Breeding: Open sandy or gravelly areas with scattered pitch pines, scrub oaks and other plants with similar requirements; prefers barren lands, dry, rocky or brushy pasture, and dry sproutland often with scattered redcedars. Young stands of pine 10 to 30 feet tall and deciduous saplings. Logging and burning create favorable habitat.

Special Habitat Requirements: Favors coniferous cover. Avoids high elevations.

Not a bird of open prairies, this warbler nests in young second-growth scrub and densely overgrown fields in eastern North America.

Habitat: Brushy slashing, bushy pastures, low pines. Breeds in dry old clearings, edges of forest, and sandy pine barrens with undergrowth of scrub oaks, especially on ends of slopes and ridges. Likes thick second growth of hickory, dogwood, hazel, or laurel with blackberry vines.

Diet: Mostly insects. Feeds on many insects including caterpillars, moths, tree crickets, lacewings, true bugs, beetles, ants, flies; also spiders and millipedes. Also eats a few berries and occasionally sap from holes drilled in trees by sapsuckers. Nestlings are fed mostly caterpillars.

Nest: Usually rather low in tree, can by 1-45 feet above the ground. Nest is an open cup, made of densely felted plant materials such as plant down and lined with animal hair.

Conservation Status: Surveys show declining numbers in recent decades. Over much of range, requires brushy areas growing up after clearing or fires, and disappears as forests mature. Also hurt by cowbird parasitism.