Townsend's warbler has a yellow face with a black stripe across its cheeks extending into an ear patch, a thin pointed bill, two white wing bars, olive upperparts with black streaks on their backs and flanks, and a white belly.[7] Adult males have a black cap, black throat and yellow lower breast; females have a dark cap and a yellow throat. Immature birds are similar to females with a dark green cap and cheeks.[8]
Their breeding habitats are coniferous forests with large trees on the northwestern coast of North America.[7] Their nests are shallow cups built with grass and lined with moss.[10] These nests are usually placed atop a branch in a conifer. The female lays 4 to 5 brown-speckled white eggs.[10]
This bird is closely related to the hermit warbler, and the two species interbreed where their ranges overlap.[8]
They forage actively in the higher branches, often gleaning insects from foliage and sometimes hovering or catching insects in flight.[11] They mainly eat insects and spiders and seeds. Outside of the nesting season, these birds forage in mixed flocks. In winter, they also eat berries and plant nectar,[10] and honeydew directly from the anus of scale insects.[12]
The song of the male bird is a buzzed zee-zee-zee-bzz-zee or weazy weazy weazy weazy twea,[10] somewhat similar to that of its eastern relative, the black-throated green warbler.[8] The call is a sharp tup.
This bird was named after the American ornithologist, John Kirk Townsend.[2] Although Townsend is also credited with first describing this bird, he used a name chosen by Thomas Nuttall, who was travelling with him, and so sidestepped the convention against naming a species after oneself.[7]
^ abcdWright, A. L.; Hayward, G. D.; Matsuoka, S. M.; Hayward, P. H. (2020-03-04). Rodewald, P. G. (ed.). "Birds of the World". Townsend's Warbler. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.towwar.01. Retrieved 2022-10-21.