Lucy’s Warbler, Leiothlypis luciae

Lucy’s Warbler, Leiothlypis luciae. Photograph taken within a residential community in Hereford, Arizona, April 2015. Photograph and identification courtesy of Bob Behrstock, Sierra Vista, Arizona (naturewideimages.com).

Lucy’s Warbler, Leiothlypis luciae. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, March 2019. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Lucy’s Warbler, Leiothlypis luciae. Photograph taken within the bush of the greater Bahía de los Ángeles area, Baja California, October 2019. Photograph courtesy of George Flicker, Bahía de los Ángeles, Baja California. Identification courtesy of Mary & George Flicker, Bahía de los Ángeles.

Background and Identification

Lucy’s Warbler, Leiothlypis luciae, is a member of the Parulidae Family of New World Warblers, that has one hundred eleven individual species that have been placed into eighteen genera and one of six global members of the Leiothlypis Genus. They are also known as the Desert Warbler and the Mesquite Warbler and in Mexico as reinita de Lucy.

Lucy’s Warbler is small in stature. They are uniformly gray above and off-white to buff white below with a contrasting rufous crown-patch, rump and upper tail coverts. The females have less coloration than the males. They have a small finely pointed bill that is a darker black above and grayish blue below, their iris is brown or dark brown, their legs and feet are dusky or black and their tail is short, notched and unmarked. They have an indistinct eye-ring or line over the eye. Their dark eyes are prominent against their gray coloration.

Habitat and Geographical Range

Lucy’s Warbler is known to breed in Northeast Baja California, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua. They are winter visitors to Mexico’s Pacific Slope and adjacent interior from Southern Sonora south to Oaxaca. They are typically found in small flocks within flowering trees, thorn forests, riparian scrub and dry washes. Their diets consist almost exclusively of insects. They have live spans of up to six years. They are small in stature, live in the driest riparian areas, and very little about their biology and behavioral patterns has been documented.

Common Misidentifications

Conservation Perspective

From a conservation perspective Lucy’s Warbler is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely-distributed populations. Their long-term survival is affected by human development in the lower Sonoran Desert that is destroying their riparian breeding habitat.