Thursday, January 13th, 2022
Big Birthday!
Happy birthday!
The likeliest bird for your mystery stripy warbler is probably Black-throated Gray Warbler. There aren’t a lot of them around, but there are definitely a few. (I saw my first of the year a few days ago.) Another possibility is Black-and-white Warbler. That would be a significantly rarer bird, but still possible.
Black-and-white Warbler has a characteristic foraging style of creeping along trunks and branches like a nuthatch. It also has a slightly droopy, downward-curved beak. Black-throated Gray is more of a “typical” warbler in the sense of having a straight beak and a foraging style of flitting around in foliage.
There are some other differences in their appearance that are pretty obvious once you know what to look for. Black-and-white Warbler has longitudinal striping over the top half of the head; basically a really stripy black-and-white crown. It continues that pattern by having bold black-and-white longitudinal stripes on its back. Black-throated Gray has a solid crown but big, curvy, white stripes across the face. They also sometimes have a little yellow spot in front of the eye, which is hard to see but distinctive if you do see it. They have more of a solid gray on the back.
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![](https://64.media.tumblr.com/98f73ede8c2c309dd0b136d6793aff36/fcd1e5a8ff98810f-9b/s2048x3072/4894c608d8815360fbbf1dc7d815c5e9f4d8535f.jpg)
Checking the eBird histogram for the Salesforce Park hotspot, it looks like there have been reports of Black-throated Gray Warbler there before, so that definitely seems like a possibility. Yours would be the first reported sighting outside of fall migration, though, which would be kind of exciting.
![](https://64.media.tumblr.com/93d4f564589d196691c0926a8d47ea3c/fcd1e5a8ff98810f-02/s2048x3072/f1d42463b21e2cf68ae98793c6d2dd3e7411707f.jpg)
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/673273979257192448.