Weekend Birding – Northern Parula at South Coast Botanic Garden

By Miles

Today, my dad and I drove to the South Coast Botanic Garden based on an eBird report of a rare bird, the Northern Parula. When we got there a birder was coming out. She told us which tree she saw it feeding on this morning. It was a very big coral tree with tons of red flowers and quite a lot of Warblers and Parrots on it. Just after she went out of sight, I spotted a suspicious small Warbler feeding around a flower. Through my binoculars, it was very obvious that it was the Northern Parula! I quickly took some photos, but it was chased away by some Yellow-rumped Warbler very soon. Then, we waited several extra hours but it still didn’t come back.

(Northern Parula on the coral tree, March 8th, 2025, Photo by Miles)

(Yellow-chevroned Parakeet on the coral tree, March 8th, 2025, Photo by Miles)

The Northern Parula is a medium-small-sized passerine, a little bit smaller than a Yellow-rumped Warbler, with a typical warbler shape and sharply pointed bill. It has a small patch of black in front of its eye, with white above and below. Its throat is yellow, and except that the whole head is in a blueish-grey color. The middle of its back is green and has two white wing bars. Except from them, its back, wing, and tail are all blueish-grey too. Its belly is white and the breast is orangeish-yellow with a dark orange breast band (some Northern Parulas have black bands and females have no band at all). They are usually in the upper regions of a forest in the eastern part of North America feeding on insects and other bugs, but this one kind of got lost and flew into this botanic garden in southern California.