Hooded Warblers (Setophaga citrina) have been delighting me here in the mountains for many years. They spend the breeding season in eastern North America, and the winter in Central America and the West Indies.
If you feed the birds during the summer, these birds generally won’t come to your feeders. They spend all their feeding moments gleaning insects and spiders from the leaves of the dense understory. And occasionally showing off by catching a flying insect in midair.
My strategy to get frequent glimpses of these beautiful birds is to provide them with a birdbath, including one that has a dripper. The bird at the birdbath in the picture above is a female Hooded Warbler looking a bit disheveled after taking a dip.
And here a male Hooded Warbler considers taking a dive from the dripper into the water.
And here he is dripping wet. Believe me, birdbaths are quite the draw for birds. My birds really need a birdbath, for my sake.
What a beautiful bird. I’ve never had the pleasure but I think my chances will be good here and in my travels. I find water attracts more birds than food.