This is the loveliest bird in California.
She is a bird of the Pacific slope, a treasure unthought of by those domesticated old easterners who clutter up my appreciations of hermit thrushes, robins, and the like. Those who know her know her worth; my great predecessor Dawson made this unhesitating valuation:
This is, in fact, a very dream of a bird, and I count it rather the handsomest of our western species.
– William Leon Dawson, The Birds of California
By and large, however, the Townsend’s warbler is ignored and unappreciated by the eastern pens that dominate our few centuries of American bird writing. But we’re not in the 1800s anymore. You and I live here, at the continent’s end. Having made my customary tip of the hat to old Bill, I will now cast aside all secondary testimony that presumes to tell me which birds are the most beautiful. I will shine this spotlight of rightful homage where it belongs, with no one’s help but yours. I relish the opportunity.
On warblers
The main reason for the under-recognition of Townsend’s warbler among the pantheon of America’s avian beauties is simply geographical. In summer they are confined to a relatively small corner of the continent, especially from the perspective of the lower 48, nesting from Oregon in the south, inland to Idaho, and north to Alaska. During the nesting season, they spend much of their time high in the forest canopy and mix little with people. And the human overlap is only likely to diminish as their breeding range is pushed northward by a warming climate: by the end of my life, you will probably be hard pressed to find a Townsend’s nest below the Canadian border.
But in winter they head south and to the coast, dividing between Mexico and the westernmost strip of the continent. Here they spread beyond the forest, enter the woods, come down closer to our human level in the more modest heights of oaks and bays. They cling to California’s edge: journey eastward 100 miles from my home by San Francisco Bay and you have left behind the land of the Townsend’s warbler, with some 2400 miles of America left to endure as a dull and dreary land bereft of her presence. If you pass your winters west of the Sierras, you can therefore congratulate yourself on your good fortune: you clearly live in the most favored 4% of the country’s longitudinal expanse.
The easterners find it particularly easy to ignore our jewel of western warblerdom because they are inarguably wealthier in that family. There are over 50 warbler species, only about a dozen of which are regularly found in California. Type “most beautiful warbler” into the internet, a friend with some eastern experience pointed out to me, and you will not get many pictures of your beloved Townsend’s. Instead, you will see an impressive panoply of Birds We Don’t Have Here, with perhaps the most well-represented being the Blackburnian warbler.
In California, it’s quite natural for the average person to have only a vague idea of what a warbler even is. To clarify: they are small songbirds in the family Parulidae, active hunters of insects who are often adorned with splashes of bright color, most often yellow. Like other insect-eating birds, they have thin bills (unlike the more conical, seed-cracking bills of goldfinches, our most common little yellow birds) and are mostly migratory in North America, where much of the continent sees a great seasonal upsurge in invertebrate prey followed by several months of scarcity.
Back in the 1800s, when the warblers were first being identified by western science, they were placed in the traditional genus of European warblers, Sylvia, that lovely word meaning “sylvan,” or “living in the woods.” Eventually, it was realized that our birds were quite distinct from those of the old world, and so we transferred many of our warblers to the also pleasantly-named Dendroica (dendron meaning tree and oikos meaning house, for “tree-dwelling”). This endured as the main catch-all genus for the bulk of our warblers until 2011, when continuing development of our evolutionary understanding collided with the inexorable law of taxonomic precedence and moved all of the Dendroica warblers to Setophaga, the “moth-eaters.” This name is not particularly descriptive of the 25 birds now included under that genus, nor anywhere near as euphonious to pronounce as its precursors.
My point in this lesson in taxonomic history is simple: these are birds of the woods, not mere unpoetic moth-eaters, and if words like “Setophaga,” “Townsend’s,” or the not-terribly-insightful “warbler” fail to excite a warm fluttering in your heart, I encourage you to think of these birds as members of Sylvia or Dendroica that were, the sylvans or the tree-dwellers. Such words always predispose me to admiration and a vague expectation of magical potential. To step into the forest is to escape from the quotidian modernity of urban existence into timelessness. The Romans walked beyond the town to conduct their rites and seek their gods in lucis umbrosis, among the shaded groves. That is where the warblers live.
The Townsend’s warbler is a member of this big and shaggy genus of troublesome identity. In some ways, she is therefore one among many, a reasonable representative of the warbler experience. But she also belongs to two more selective clubs. The first is a group of five warblers variably known as the “black-throated group,” the “virens complex,” or the “virens superspecies.” (I think I’ll stick with “club.”) The second sorority, from our Californian perspective, is an interesting pairing that we can casually term our winter warblers, two birds who nest to the north and then migrate to our coast in fall: the Townsend’s and Audubon’s (or yellow-rumped) warblers. Considering each of these identities will shed more light on our finest sylvan as we circle and approach her essence in increasing specificity.
One of the warblers, among the half-hundred,
Tree-dwellers that were, two dozen in number,
Finest of five, black-throated and green-backed,
Part of a pair, friends named for friends,
Gem of the forest: John Townsend’s treasure.
Well now I’m writing verses. The beauty must really be getting to me.
A bird of spring: the black-throated wave
I’ve said that Townsend’s warbler is a bird of winter for us along the California coast, with their breeding grounds found entirely north of the Oregon border. They are not a bird of the California summer. But they are a bird of spring.
In April, I like to go out to the woodlands closest to my home, the relatively dry broadleaf forest of Big Rock Ridge. At this time of year, I will be surrounded on all sides by the songs of the local nesters: titmice and juncos, orange-crowned warblers and towhees, warbling vireos and finches. But there are other voices that will soon depart: the great wave of warblers is sweeping northward, singing as they go.
There are yellow-rumped warblers, who spent the winter with us, heading for the mountains. There are Wilson’s warblers, seeking out the pockets of denser forest which they will seize for their nesting territories. And then there are the three black-throated warblers of the Pacific coast, all discovered by John Kirk Townsend in the valley of the Columbia River: the black-throated gray, the hermit, and the bird that bears his own name. That Townsend’s warbler spent the winter here in silent shyness. Now he sings.
(There are a total of five members of the black-throated group: the others are the endangered golden-cheeked warbler in Texas and the black-throated green warbler, across much of the east. Due to taxonomy’s eastern bias, this group is sometimes referred to as the virens superspecies after the latter bird, Setophaga virens, virens meaning green and referring to this bird’s back color.)
You can observe the fraternal resemblance, note that the siblings all come from generally attractive stock, but my inescapable conclusion is that the Townsend’s is the family beauty, the perfected essence and grand culmination of the magnificent five.
All of the Townsend’s warblers will continue northward, while hermits and black-throated grays have a scattered local breeding presence. Occasionally, I will make special trips of a moderate distance to see them on their nesting territory: Marin’s main hotspot for both is on Mount Tamalpais, in the relatively mixed and open Douglas-Fir forest around Rock Spring. Locally speaking, once summer arrives, it is possible to find hermits and black-throated grays with a bit of trouble and time commitment, while the jewel of the family is now several hundred miles away. If I wait for summer, I have to seek out these warblers in various distinct locations at highly irksome distances. But when I step out my doorway in spring, the wave will sweep them all into my outstretched hands.
The warblers migrate at night. They fly by the stars, enjoy the cool, dark air as their wings pump hour after hour. They don’t need the sun to set their course. But they do need it to find food. So when they look down and see trees as the day breaks, they head into the oaks, bays, and madrones. Spring is here, the game is on, and though they have not yet reached their destination, they sing in impatience as they feed.
This is the peak of Townsend’s numbers. This is the peak of black-throated grays and of hermit warblers. The million dull, foraging yellow-rumps of winter are transformed, joined, and displaced by singing birds in all their summer glory. The orange-crowned and Wilson’s warblers pour over the hills, filling in the waiting territories like water filling holes as the great wave washes over, roaring northwards, not exhausting itself for another two thousand miles.
You knew the Townsend’s and the yellow-rumped warblers in winter; you thought they didn’t sing. Now you hear them, unfamiliar songs whose sources turn out to be familiar friends, but less familiar than you thought: they had talents that they hid from you, and now you wonder how you thought you knew them at all. The warblers do warble. Townsend’s do sing. And we see them not just in winter’s intermission, but also at spring’s great raising of the curtain.
The winter warblers: the quieter of the pair
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme…
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter.
– Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
It is easy to miss that spring capstone to the season of the Townsend’s warbler. She chants in the company of her black-throated cousins for a matter of weeks. But for some six months of the year she forages quietly in our woodlands, sometimes alone, sometimes joining in with the shifting flocks of chickadees, kinglets, and creepers. Spring is the season of a thousand bright and singing creatures, when the hordes of insect-eating warblers, flycatchers, vireos, and orioles come north to take advantage of the great invertebrate awakening across the continent. But when those massed tourists leave, when they head back to the crowded tropical forests of Mexico and Central America, then the Townsend’s warbler stops short, eschews the departing carnival of color, and remains in California, the silent gem of winter.
We have one other warbler that follows a similar schedule: the western race of the yellow-rumped warbler, often known as the Audubon’s warbler. The seasonal pairing of these birds in California makes for an interesting historical parallel, as their eponyms were also closely tied together. Townsend discovered and named that bird after Audubon, admired the famous painter’s work, and provided the models for the majority of his western bird paintings. When Townsend’s sizable collection arrived in Philadelphia, long before the naturalist himself made it home from his great voyage to the west, it was Audubon who described and published them on Townsend’s behalf, securing the names that Townsend gave them.
Audubon was the great, flamboyant figure of his time, greatly overshadowing the modest Townsend in history’s memory. And so it is with their namesake birds: Audubon’s warbler is abundant and widespread, on average favoring more open areas than the forest-dwelling Townsend’s, but overall simply far more numerous, garrulous, and unmissable. Townsend’s warbler is of much less far-reaching fame, is quiet and little published, but is loved by those who know her. This appears to be the general consensus on the historical figures (once you get past the outermost layers of institutionalized admiration for Audubon’s artistic achievement): one man was flashy and self-promoting, while the other was unhungry for fame, but admired by his chosen companions.
I do not wish to magnify any danger or difficulty that I may have escaped during some three & ½ years of wandering by flood and field… I have no ambition to be a hero, nor the least particle of a “lion,” & if when I arrive at home, people expect me to talk and endeavour to entertain them, they will find themselves much mistaken, that’s all – for I shall be as “silent as an oyster” – I have become very taciturn, very – I can’t talk at all except to my dear Sisters & to them I shall pour out my heart.
– John Kirk Townsend’s Journal, excerpt in John Kirk Townsend by Mearns and Mearns
Townsend was probably the better ornithologist, but he was also a silent oyster, while Audubon was a boastful lion. And such taciturnity is perhaps the outstanding feature of Townsend’s warblers as we know them in winter. Occasionally they chip, with a call a bit sharper than the Audubon’s warbler, closer to that of juncos. But they are far less social than those species, who gather in winter flocks of chatty dispositions, and so they are often completely silent. In a way this feels more fitting: what sounds could possibly live up to the appearance of this bird?
This is the real sylvan historian, the quiet Sylvia that John Townsend found in the October forests of the Columbia. She tells an older story than any antique vase; we know her unheard melodies exist, but they are as yet unexpressed, unflawed by realization in the audible world. A perfect silence makes all eloquence seem overly effortful. We have enough speech.
I love birdsong. But I also love the quiet places: old churches, galleries of paintings, star-strewn nights, and the warbler’s winter woods.
John’s Warbler
… for surely by this time, methinks thou must be tired of dwelling in distant lands, or roaming the Forrests in search of the feathered tribe and the natural curiosities of the Earth, and quite ready to return to civilized life, the comforts of thy own home, and the embrace of those who love thee.
– Priscilla Townsend to her son, March 3, 1836
They knew but little of the resources of the naturalist; they knew not that the wild forest, the deep glen, and the rugged mountain-top possess charms for him which he would not exchange for gilded palaces; and that to acquaint himself with nature, he gladly escapes from the restraints of civilization, and buries himself from the world which cannot appreciate his enjoyment.
– John Kirk Townsend, Narrative of a Voyage
I regularly deplore boring bird names. I constantly extol the value of traditional names that normal people might use, that naturally sum up a bird’s distinctive features. But the truth is that the Townsend’s warbler has no folk names. The smaller and shyer a bird is, the more often that’s the case. This applies to many warblers.
Wood Warblers: Exceedingly active, graceful, restless feeders among the terminal twigs of trees and shrubbery; haunters of tree-tops in the woods at nesting time. Abundant birds, especially during May and September, when the majority are migrating to and from regions north of the United States; but they are strangely unknown to all but devoted bird lovers, who seek them out during these months that particularly favor acquaintance.
– Bird Neighbors, Neltje Blanchan, 1897
“Unknown to all but devoted bird lovers, who seek them out.” I try to write most about birds that require little seeking, that are ubiquitous and almost unavoidably accessible. But there are some treasures worth the search. Birders will seek anything new, for the thrill of the chase and the novelty of the object. Bird lovers seek out warblers.
John Kirk Townsend was such a bird lover. He was no stuffy academic, but a young man from Philadelphia with a passion for nature. In 1834, at the age of 24, he headed west on his one great adventure in company with the renowned Thomas Nuttall, over twenty years his senior. Nuttall was the foremost botanist in the country, as well as a highly-qualified naturalist in almost all branches of life, and he tasked Townsend with responsibility for the birds and mammals they discovered as they passed over the plains, crossed the Rockies, and descended to the Columbia River basin and the shores of the Pacific.
In the west, Townsend discovered dozens of birds and animals new to science. He found five new warblers alone – and this was the one he wanted to be known for. Give the other birds practical, straightforward, boring names: western warbler or chestnut-backed titmouse. But if you want your own name to live on for posterity, if you want it to be associated with something fine and beautiful, find that dream of a bird and tie your fate to hers.
Who was John Kirk Townsend? We are fortunate to know him to an unusually personal degree. He kept a journal on his trip, publishing it upon his return as A Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands. And the character we find in his story is one of enthusiasm, excitement, intelligence, and steadfast decency. There were hardships and difficulties, which he faced with good humor. He ran from grizzlies, awoke in the night with silent and unannounced natives staring into the darkness beside him, and his travelling companions were very different from the middle-class Quakers and Philadelphia naturalists of his youth:
Thornburg had been killed this morning by Hubbard, the gunsmith… This Thornburg was an unusually bold and determined man, fruitful in inventing mischief, as he was reckless and daring in its prosecution. His appetite for ardent spirits was of the most inordinate kind. During the journey across the country, I constantly carried a large two-gallon bottle of whiskey, in which I deposited various kinds of lizards and serpents and when we arrived at the Columbia the vessel was almost full of these crawling creatures. I left the bottle on board…and on my return found that Thornburg had decanted the liquor from the precious reptiles which I had destined for immortality, and he and one of his pot companions had been happy upon it for a whole day.
Factually speaking, John Townsend’s companions included gluttonous drunkards who ate his specimens (the birds, not these lizards), drank his preservatives, and killed each other. For three years and eight months, he forsook the comforts of home and civilization, left behind his family, church, and everyone he knew, became very sick and nearly died on multiple occasions, lost a large part of his belongings, and came back broke. He had a grand time.
The names given to birds can often seem like inconsequential gestures, token acknowledgments of financial patronage or personal attachments utterly unrelated to the birds in question. But John Townsend’s warbler was named by his sincere friend Nuttall, in honor of a man who traveled through 2500 miles of danger in search of birds, and who exhibited a consistent decency and tolerance towards persons and events that earned him the love and respect of all who knew him. He was not the greatest of history’s ornithologists, but there is no other I feel I know so well, and whose acquaintance I am so glad to have made.
The proper noun in “Townsend’s Warbler” need not be a mere adjective, a mere component of an inseparable binomial. Instead, I think of it as an active statement of association, of recognition of a man. Not a “Townsend’s warbler,” but simply John Townsend’s warbler, the warbler Townsend found and wondered at. He made a great journey and found this bird his greatest discovery. I am glad to acknowledge his judgment each time I speak the name, to emulate his gratitude for life’s simple gifts.
Conclusion: Quaker Homage
It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature; whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.
Let us begin where she begins, go her pace, and close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good naturalists.
… And it would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and known in the creation of it.
For how could man find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof?
Their Ignorance makes them insensible, and that Insensibility hardy in misusing this noble Creation, that has the Stamp and Voice of a Deity everywhere, and in every thing to the observing.
– William Penn, Fruits of Solitude
How would I have you know John Townsend’s warbler? As a representative of the great tribe of tree-dwellers, unknown to many, but sought out by bird lovers. As part of the great wave of spring, that tide of song that sweeps northward over California each year. As the shy and silent jewel of our winter woods, easily missed but hard to forget. And I would also have you remember John Kirk Townsend, a bird lover more than an ornithologist, a good man more than a scientist.
Townsend came from a devout Quaker family of Philadelphia, thousands of miles and hundreds of years removed from us modern Californians. But the faith he was raised in, the faith of tolerance, forbearance, and the appreciation of simple things, rings through in every page of the narrative of his youth. His sisters were abolitionists; his brother led an institute for the blind. John studied birds, not for money or fame, but because it was his vocation, because that was what he felt called to do. And when he had his chance to see the west, he took it, an opportunity that would not be repeated.
John K. Townsend was evidently a genius whom force of circumstances prevented from reaching his proper place in ornithological annals.
– Witmer Stone, The Condor, 1916
In the glimpses we have of the young man in the rugged west, we see both a sharp mind and a deep faith in the goodness of the world. To his particular disposition, this goodness and beauty was most manifest in the forms of birds, and in none more so than in the warbler that bears his name.
For how could man find the confidence to abuse [the world], while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof?
John Kirk Townsend saw the Great Creator in every animal he came across, saw it stare him in the face in every bird he met. If all could see it so starkly, in bird and plant and human alike, then Penn’s vision might come true: the end of abuse and a withholding from destruction.
Why did Townsend cross the continent, endure dangers and hardship, and part for years from those he loved? Because he was convinced that there was something in the west that he could not find at home, because his creator called to him most strongly in the shape of undiscovered birds. To find this warbler in the woods, the loss of civilized conveniences seemed a small price to pay, courage and toil seemed the least he could offer, and any attitude other than grateful admiration felt petty and unworthy. For a thousand days and five thousand miles, this vision urged John Townsend onward on his road and upward in his mind.
This is the gift of beauty.
Header photo: Townsend’s warbler by Julio Mulero
Jack … once again, your writing leaves me breathless …
What a remarkable essay on this wondrous gem: when I’ve had the great fortune to see a Townsend’s Warbler at my feeders, I am stunned & captivated by her singular beauty. Thank you, Jack, for this amazing tribute to the warbler & the man she is named for.
a poetic and evocative homage to a shy bird that captivates us with its mystery and beauty. Thank you Jack for sharing your gift of appreciation for birds, nature, and life itself.
You have outdone yourself, Jack, and for me at the most opportune time. I had the pleasure of a slow meander through a Doug fir and oak hillside in Pescadero this weekend and finally enjoyed the company of a Townsend’s male for a good fifteen minutes as he hunted about. I have had glimpses, but never able to observe one foe an extended time. Thank you so much for such a fun literary journey through the history of this spectacular little fellow.
Wonderful and moving piece! I spotted a Townsend’s warbler just yesterday at my suet feeder. Thank you for this rich history and background. Now I see the forest for the trees.
I usually have robins in January to eat cotoneoster berries. I have seen none. Where are they this year