Vireo gilvus
Silhouette: Caleb Gordon · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The warbling vireo (Vireo gilvus) is a small North American songbird. Its breeding habitat is open deciduous and mixed woods from Alaska to Mexico. It often nests in widely spaced trees, often cottonwood or aspen, along streams or rivers. It migrates to Mexico and Central America.
Measurements: Length: 12–13 cm (4.7–5.1 in) Wingspan: 22 cm (8.7 in) Weight: 10–16 g (0.35–0.56 oz) They are mainly olive-grey on the head and upperparts with white underparts; they have brown eyes and the front of the face is light. There is a white supercilium. They have thick blue-grey legs and a stout bill. Western birds are generally smaller and have darker grey crowns.
Warbling vireos forage for insects in trees, hopping along branches and sometimes hovering. They also eat berries, especially before migration and in winter quarters, where they are, like other vireos, apparently quite fond of gumbo-limbo seeds, though they will not venture into human-modified habitat to get them.
They make a deep cup nest suspended from a tree branch or shrub, placed relatively high in the east and lower in the west. The male helps with incubation and may sing from the nest. The song is a cheerful warble, similar to that of the painted bunting and the purple finch. There are subtle differences in song between eastern and western birds, at least where the ranges meet in Alberta. Some authors recommend splitting the eastern and western subspecies of this species into separate species, and as of 2025, the eBird/Clements taxonomy split the two into separate species.
The eastern warbling vireo, V. g. gilvus, breeds from central Alberta and northern Montana east and south through most of the United States and parts of southern Canada, outside the range of the previous group. It winters south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from south-central Chiapas to Nicaragua. It completes its autumn moult on the breeding grounds, while the swainsonii group completes it after leaving.
These two subspecies winter in Mexico. The swainsoni group also includes V. g. Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montreal | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 2 | Chicago | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 3 | Toronto | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 4 | Boston | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 5 | Minneapolis [Saint Paul] | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 6 | Puebla | 🇲🇽 México | |
| 7 | New York City | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 8 | Vancouver | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 9 | Philadelphia | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 10 | Baltimore | 🇺🇸 United States |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Warbling Vireo sighting in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks on a given day, based on 425 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 33rd most-seen of the 152 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
June
In that month about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Warbling Vireo in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks on a given day, against under 5% in October to March, the lowest months. That is one of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain against 190 mm in January.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Warbling Vireo sightings with a recorded time, and nearly all of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
7th of 34
Of the 34 parks where we can rate Warbling Vireo sightings, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks ranks 7th at about 20%. The best odds are in Point Pelee National Park (Canada, about 60%), Glacier National Park (United States, about 40%) and Grand Teton National Park (United States, about 40%). All parks ranked.
Same genus: Vireo
The closest relatives of the Warbling Vireo that you can see in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (genus Vireo, Vireos) are Cassin's Vireo (about 10%) and Hutton's Vireo (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Warbling Vireo is recorded against all the birds logged in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (425 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
