The prairie warbler (Setophaga discolor) is a small songbird of the New World warbler family.
Taxonomy
The prairie warbler belongs to the genus Setophaga. The species was described by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in a work published in 1807 documenting North American birds, where he called the bird Sylvia discolor, although the genus designation Sylvia was not later retained. It was also previously assigned to the genus Dendroica before that genus was merged into Setophaga.
The vernacular name "prairie warbler" is attributed to the Scottish-American naturalist Alexander Wilson who saw the species in 1810 in prairie country in southwestern Kentucky. American zoologist Arthur H. Howell is credited with describing S. d. paludicola in a paper published in 1930. H. H. Bailey had also previously described the subspecies sometime from 1926 to 1930 (date uncertain), but he did not publish it publicly. A black stripe runs through the eye, and another black stripe runs from the beak down the throat. The bird weighs about .
The tail of an adult male measures from , the exposed culmen measures from , and the tarsus measures from .
Distribution
The full breeding range of the subspecies S. d. discolor includes much of the eastern United States, with the highest population density in the southeast. Isolated populations have been observed as far west as Kansas, Iowa, and Michigan. Their reach extends as far north as Ontario and New Brunswick in Canada.
Prairie warblers are victims of nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird, which causes them to raise young cowbirds instead of their own chicks or sometimes to abandon affected nests all together.
Behaviour
Prairie warblers wag, or pump, their tails frequently, which is a behavior they have in common with Palm warblers and Kirtland's warblers.
Status
Although the species is not considered to be in danger of extinction,