Multi-Colored Chestnut Warbler perched on branches off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina - stock photo

Despite his bright colors the chestnut-sided warbler camoflauges well in the pink Mountain Laurel growing along the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC. The crisply plumaged Chestnut-sided Warbler is not your average warbler of the deep forest. These slender, yellow-capped and chestnut-flanked songsters thrive in young, regrowing forests, thickets, and other disturbed areas. Look for them foraging among the fine branches of slender saplings, tail cocked, and listen for males singing an excitable pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha! In fall, this bird molts into lime-green and grayish white plumage with a distinctive white eye ring, and heads to thickets, shade-coffee plantations, and second growth forest in Central America. Stay around clearings, road edges, or other disturbed sites with young deciduous trees to find Chestnut-sided Warblers. Listen out for their sweetly sung pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha!, more emphatic than Yellow Warbler and more musical than American Redstart. Look for this bird foraging, often with its tail raised and wings drooped, among the outer branches of shrubs and small trees, often lower than other warblers. They often come closer to investigate quiet pishing sounds. Taken off Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC.