Everything about Tree Warbler totally explained
Tree warblers are medium-sized
birds belonging to the genus
Hippolais , formerly placed in the "
Old World warbler" family Sylviidae but now separated in the marsh- and tree-warbler family
Acrocephalidae. They occur in
Europe,
Africa and western
Asia.
These warblers are always associated with trees, though normally in fairly open woodland rather than tight plantations. They are quite clumsy in their movements.
These are plump, strong-looking birds with long bills, strong feet and long wing. Most are unstreaked greenish or brownish above and cream or white below. They are
insectivorous, but will occasionally take
berries or
seeds.
Species breeding in temperate regions are usually strongly
migratory.
Considerable evidence, much of it summarised in Parkin et al (2004), suggests that the genus
Hippolais is
paraphyletic with respect to
Acrocephalus. DNA studies for example Leisler et al (1997), interpreted in Sangster (1997), indicated that the olivaceous and Booted/Sykes's warbler grouping (the subgenus
Iduna) are more closely related to
Acrocephalus species than they're to Icterine and Melodious Warblers and as a result the Dutch
CSNA has moved these four species into
Acrocephalus. A subsequent review by the
BOURC retained the genus
Hippolais, for all eight species, but in agreement with Sangster, acknowledged that they fell into two groups. The retention of the
Iduna grouping within
Hippolais was done because it was felt that more evidence was needed for its placement, because of low bootstrap values, rather than because of a belief that the status quo was correct - no evidence was put forward to refute the DNA findings. Mark Constantine, in "The Sound Approach to Birding" illustrated that there's extensive overlap in song types between species from the two genera, and that vocally, no characters existed which enabled species to be sorted into one genus or the other.
Kenneth Wiliamson and
Hadoram Shirihai, in discussing the identification of
Hippolais and
Acrocephalus warblers stressed the similarities between species in the two genera. Colin Bradshaw, in
British Birds, has written several articles on morphological similarity between cross-generic species-pairs for example Eastern Olivaceous and Blyth's Reed warblers (Bradshaw 2000 ) and Paddyfield and Booted warblers (for example Bradshaw & Steele 1995, Bradshaw & Steele 1997, the latter a response to
Lars Svensson's comments on Bradshaw & Steele 1995).
The species are:
(subgenus
Iduna)
(subgenus
Hippolais)
Upcher's Warbler, Hippolais languida
Olive-tree Warbler, Hippolais olivetorum
Melodious Warbler, Hippolais polyglotta
Icterine Warbler, Hippolais icterinaFurther Information
Get more info on 'Tree Warbler'.
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