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Booted Warbler

Booted Warbler

Iduna caligata

Identify the Booted Warbler by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Booted Warbler is a small, plain warbler that breeds from eastern Europe and central Russia to western China and winters on the Indian subcontinent. It has grey-brown upperparts, pale underparts and a clear pale supercilium, with a short-winged, rather compact look and a square-tipped tail. Tricky to identify, it was long lumped with Sykes's Warbler, and it is a regular vagrant to western Europe.

Did you know?

  • Its name caligata is Latin for “booted”, from caliga, a boot.
  • It was long treated as the same species as Sykes's Warbler.

Voice

Song

About the species

Identification

A small warbler, greyish-brown above and pale below. A clear pale supercilium, extending behind the eye, gives it an expressive face, and the bill is fine with a pale lower mandible. The song is an eager, short warble and the call a short “tchek”, which help identification in dense cover. Compared with Blyth's Reed Warbler it is paler and smaller-billed with a stronger supercilium.

Family

Sylviidae

Size

Tiny (goldcrest)

Colours

brown, white, grey

About the habitat

Open country with scattered bushes, weedy fields and tall herbage, often near rivers or wetland edges; similar scrubby habitats on migration and in winter.

Diet

Mainly small insects and spiders; occasionally berries.

Behaviour

Moves quietly through low bushes and tall grass, gleaning prey from leaves and stems, often flicking its tail. The song is a fast, chattering warble. It builds a cup nest of plant material lined with hair and feathers, placed on or near the ground in dense undergrowth.

Sources

Photo: Francesco Veronesi from Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Booted Warbler - Kazakistan S4E0786 (17330623545).jpg

Sound: Jochem Verweij, XC908963, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/908963

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booted_warbler

See also