Tropical Parula

It is 4.3 in (11 cm) long and has mainly blue-grey upperparts, with a greenish back patch and two white wingbars. The underparts are yellow, becoming orange on the breast. The male has a black patch from the bill to behind the eye. Females are slightly duller than the males and lacks black on the head. The immature tropical parula is dull-plumaged, lacks the wing bars, and has a grey band on the breast. The song is a high buzzy trill, and the call is a sharp tsit. The tropical parula has about 14 subspecies, with a wide range of plumage tones. S. p. graysoni, is endemic to Socorro in the Revillagigedo Islands. Some subspecies (especially insular ones) are occasionally considered separate species. Setophaga pitiayumi has occasionally been lumped with the closely related northern parula (S. americana) as a single species. Hybrids are routinely found in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas, though this may be a recent phenomenon. Most tropical parulas can be distinguished from the northern parula by their lack of white eye crescents, but this may be ambiguous in hybrids. One should also look for the distribution and extent of non-yellow coloration on the breast, and the extent of yellow below the cheek and on the belly. In addition, a partially leucistic tropical parula female was seen in 2005, at Reserva Buenaventura in El Oro Province, Ecuador. With several small white areas on the forehead and around the eyes, this bird appeared much like a hybrid, but such birds would only occur as far south as Panama (if they would migrate like the northern parula).