Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora pinus), Cook's Lake, private property, Pinal County

This Blue-winged Warbler was discovered on an AZFO mini-expedition led by Troy Corman to Cook's Lake along the San Pedro River south of Dudleyville on 25 October 2009.  This area is private property and not open to the public.  It was photographed by Andrew Core at the same time. 

There are only eight previous records of this species for Arizona.  Blue-winged Warbler and Golden-winged Warbler form a pair of closely related species that hybridize and compete with each other.  Historically Golden-winged has been the more westerly and northerly of the pair.  Not surprisingly there are many more records of Golden-winged Warbler in Arizona than of Blue-winged.  However, Blue-winged has been aggressively expanding westward and northward into the Golden-winged Warbler's traditional range and is displacing it.  It will be interesting to see if this results in an increase in Blue-winged Warbler records in Arizona.  This is the second in Arizona in two years.  In California, there was only one record in the 1950's and the next occurred in the 1980's, after which it became nearly annual.  A similar pattern appears in the Arizona records - one record in the 1950's and all the rest since 1982. 

Note the yellow head and underparts, white undertail coverts, dark eyeline, narrow white wingbars, and grayish-blue wings.

25 October 2009, photo by Andrew Core

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