A Songbird for a Damaged World
Named for palms, destined for bogs, a migrating warbler meets me at the shopping center
One day during the 18th century, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, a songbird with the quirky habit of wagging its tail was killed, probably by fine-grain birdshot, and collected in the name of science.
Shipped to Europe, the specimen eventually reached Germany, where the naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin, in 1789, gave the species a misleading scientific name: Motacilla palmarum, which means a tail-wagging bird living among palms.
Two hundred and thirty-seven years later, millions of these songbirds, now going by the common name Palm Warbler, are migrating north through the U.S. and into Canada toward breeding sites far from any palm trees. Along the way, they’re unwittingly bringing tranquility and meaning to a kinetic and damaged world.
With plain plumage and an inelegant song, Palm Warblers lack the cachet of their close relatives — except for their idiosyncratic tail wagging (really more pump than wag). Other birds, including a few warbler species, wag or flick or bob their tails, but no warbler pumps like a Palm. So distinctive and constant is the motion that we birdwatchers can identify a Palm Warbler by its waggling alone.
Like other migratory species, the Palm Warbler is a creature of three distinct worlds: where it winters, where it breeds, and where it navigates in migration. In winter, Palm Warblers range from the southeastern U.S. into Mexico, Central America, and islands of the Caribbean — close enough to actual palms, even though the warblers do fine without them. During the breeding season, Palm Warblers are all but different animals, occupying remote bogs across much of Canada and parts of the northern U.S., where they nest on or just above the mossy bog mat. (Had it instead been shot and collected for science during its nesting season, this songbird could easily have been named Sphagnum Warbler.)
And yet most birdwatchers encounter Palm Warblers only in their third realm — as spring or fall migrants between the tropical and the boreal, when they stop to rest, feed, and pump their tails anywhere from forests to front lawns, from swamps to shopping centers. And once they see a Palm Warbler, many birders typically note it and then move on in search of flashier songbirds.
Not me.
This past week I was visiting family on foreign turf — the suburbs of southeastern Michigan. As much as I love my family, I struggle in their landscape. Wetlands there are filled or half-dead. The relentless din of traffic drowns out the dawn chorus. From every shopping center, I can gaze out in most any direction to see … yet another shopping center.
Still, on my morning walks in the scarcity of green, I gazed at the Palm Warblers passing through. Their seesaw tails remind me that they’ve been to wilder places north and south. We have a kinship, the warblers and me: in our time together in suburbia we do our best to get by on a damaged planet.
A Palm Warbler will always fly toward an uncertain fate, which is true for all of us. And yet even as I head home to Vermont, and warblers move on from suburbia, we will meet again soon enough.
Next week, as I do almost every spring, I’ll make my way to bogs, mostly to search for rare butterflies and dragonflies. At a Vermont bog, there is no din of traffic, no shopping malls, no politics or email. Instead, Rhodora will bloom hot pink, last year’s cranberries will be fat and ripe, and a small songbird, transcending the story imposed on it two and a half centuries ago, will be pumping its tail and singing for a mate.
As a migrant, a Palm Warbler lives entirely nowhere, except where it exists on any given day. And when we meet again at the bog, the warbler and I will renew our kinship. And in many ways, we’ll both be home.
Extras
Why the Wagging? A behavior that everyone notices is somewhat mysterious to ornithologists. Some birds wag, flick, or flash their tails (or wings) to flush insect prey. Other hypotheses are more speculative: Ground-dwelling birds (wagtails, pipits, Hermit Thrush, Palm Warbler) might wag to signal a kind of cocky confidence so that predators shouldn’t bother trying. Or it could be a form of social status or sexual signaling. We’re not entirely sure, which is fine.
Back in 1789, Gmelin could be forgiven for assigning the warbler specimen to the genus Motacilla, the wagtails of Europe, Africa, and Asia, none of which inhabit the Americas. The Palm Warbler has since been moved into the more typical warbler genus Setophaga. The specimen, collected in Santo Domingo and then shipped to Europe, seems to have since been lost (which is why the collection date and collector seem to be unknown).
Palm Warblers come in two subspecies: The “Western” Palm Warbler, plainer in plumage, nests generally west of Ottawa, Ontario; the “Eastern” Palm Warbler, showing more yellow on its body, nests east of Ottawa.
Reference
Wilson Jr., W. H. (2020). Palm Warbler (Setophaga palmarum), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.palwar.01 (Thanks, Herb!)
"no warbler pumps like a Palm" feels like a battle cry!
Beautiful little bird!