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Pallas's Leaf Warbler

Pallas's Leaf Warbler

Phylloscopus proregulus

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Pallas's Leaf Warbler is one of the tiniest Palearctic warblers, a lively green-and-white sprite with a lemon-yellow rump, a bold yellow supercilium and crown stripe and two wing bars. It breeds in mountain and taiga forests from southern Siberia and Mongolia to north-east China and winters in southern China and Southeast Asia. It is a regular late-autumn vagrant to western Europe.

Did you know?

  • It is named after the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas.
  • Differences in voice, later confirmed by DNA, led to several of its former subspecies being split.

About the species

Identification

A tiny leaf warbler, the size of a Goldcrest, with a very bold head pattern: a dark crown, a broad yellowish supercilium and a pale central crown stripe. The wing shows two clear wing bars, and the rump is pale yellow, flashing when the bird hovers. The call is a clear “dweet”. It differs from Yellow-browed Warbler in its crown stripe and yellow rump.

Family

Sylviidae

Size

Tiny (goldcrest)

Colours

green, yellow, white

About the habitat

Breeds in taiga and mountain forest dominated by spruce, fir and larch; in winter a wider range of woodland, edges, parks and scrub.

Diet

Small insects and spiders – adults, larvae, pupae and eggs – gleaned from leaves and twigs or taken while hovering.

Behaviour

An agile, high-energy forager in the outer branches, often hovering to pick prey from foliage and joining mixed flocks of tits and kinglets. The female builds a cup nest in a tree or shrub and lays 4–6 eggs; incubation lasts 12–13 days, and the young fledge at 12–14 days. Its song is a loud, varied series of whistles and trills, and its call a soft, rising “dweet”.

Sources

Photo: christoph_moning, CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goldhähnchen-Laubsänger, Heligoland, Germany 2.jpg

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas%27s_leaf_warbler

See also