7 Tips to Help You See More Warblers During Migration
Get the most from migration birding with a few simple tips, like birding sunny edges, listening for songs, and keying in on unique habits.
April 28, 2025CHRIS WOOD: If you don’t live in a big city, you still may have some great birding opportunities right in your own neighborhood.
So we’re in a residential part of Rochester, and we’re just in a small woodlot. It’s only about ten or fifteen acres. And you can see that there’s a great mix of habitat. We’ve got some tall trees, more shrubs, all these different layers, and we got here on a really good day.
You can hear that there’s a Yellow Warbler singing; there’s a Blackpoll Warbler singing. A Canada Warbler just sang over here. Let’s go see what we can find. I’m not even sure where to start. There are birds on both sides of the road.
Sometimes these overcast days… everybody likes to go out in the spring when it’s a really bright, sunny day, but these overcast days can be really good for birds. And hopefully it will mean that bird activity stays… The birds stay more active all day long.
JESSIE BARRY: Got a Yellow Warbler up here, just flitted right.
CHRIS WOOD: Nice male.
JESSIE BARRY: So sometimes we like to start out on the edge and scan, just kind of watching for motion, before we head into the woods.
CHRIS WOOD: After spending a little bit of time out on the edges, sometimes it’s good to see if you can actually go into the woodlot and listen. And sometimes pishing inside of the woodlot can be really good.
Pish, pish, pish…
JESSIE BARRY: So this crazy sound Chris is making is called pishing and it can really help bring in warblers and other passerines. It’s basically imitating the alarm call of some other passerines. It can be the perfect weapon to see flocks of birds.
CHRIS WOOD: So this is a really good spot. You can see how there’s these low shrubs, there’s a couple trails that go through here so it’s a little more open. So you can really look up and see all these different levels.
JESSIE BARRY: There’s a Black-and-white on the very top. It’s a pretty late migrant. Most Black-and-whites are already through, they tend to come through early in the spring migration.
So throughout the spring, warblers migrate kind of at different times than the overall spring migration. Birds like Black-and-white Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, they tend to migrate early in the season. And then towards the end of the migration season, you get things like Mourning Warbler, the Blackpoll Warbler, the Bay-breasted.
CHRIS WOOD: Blackburnian Warbler singing. It’s got the high, high-pitched song that rises and ends on an extremely high note.
So basically when we walk in here the first thing that we do is…is there’s actually two things. You listen for birds calling, but then you also look for motion, and Jessie and I know basically what everything we’re hearing is. But even if you don’t know what every sound is or you don’t know what any sound is, what you can do is watch for movement.
And also if you hear something that sounds interesting, just try to focus on one thing. Right now there’s so many different birds singing, it’s easy to be distracted and you sort of start looking over here, then you start looking over here, and it’s easy to get frustrated. But if you focus on maybe one bird and try to track that down, then you’ll really start to learn something about it and then when you see it, spend a little time watching it and getting to know it.
Check this out. There’s a Magnolia Warbler, just about eye level. This is the type of habitat where you usually find Magnolia Warbler. It’s sort of mid-elevation, not way up at the top, but also usually not right down on the ground, just sort of about eye-level. This is a nice male, bright yellow below, black streaks on the bird’s sides and flanks.
Sometimes when you are pishing to call birds in, the thing to do is to not get totally out in the open, because birds kind of figure out what’s going on if you’re standing out in the middle of an open field. So if we’re in this area, we’re a little more obscured. It’s a better place to start pishing for birds. Pish, pish, pish!
JESSIE BARRY: So during migration, there can be a lot of different species moving through an area. But we’re really keyed into warblers right now and we’re looking for their small size. And they move very quickly so the combination of size and shape and their behavior is really helping us pick them out against all these other species that are in the area.
CHRIS WOOD: So there’s a Chestnut-sided Warbler, and it’s working around…just if you follow this tree up to where it makes a big “V.” The Chestnut-sided Warbler’s a bird that Audubon only saw two of these when he was around. He went all over the eastern U.S, looking for birds. And what’s happened is with changes to the habitats in North America, there’s a lot more cut-over areas in the woods. And they like a second growth, actually they breed in habitats that are pretty similar to what we’re in right now. And for that reason, numbers of Chestnut-sided Warblers are much greater now than they were maybe two hundred years ago.
So most of the birds that we’re seeing in here actually aren’t going to stay here. This is a small woodlot; it’s too small to support breeding birds. But it’s what makes checking these little woodlots so fun in migrations. It’s almost like a treasure hunt. You come here and you don’t know what you’re going to see because these birds come… they land here at night and they could be here a day or maybe two days and that’s it. But in that time, they’re able to look for insects or whatever they’re eating and gather enough fat to allow them to continue on to wherever they’re breeding.
JESSIE BARRY: So from a bird’s perspective, these woodlots are critical habitat, where they’re able to find enough food to be able to continue on in migration. So from a conservation perspective, these woodlots are just critical for the warblers.
This is a really good day!
End of Transcript
Visit layered forest habitats for More Diversity
To see the most species, look for a place with a mix of vegetation structure—tall canopy trees, shorter understory trees and shrubs, tangled thickets, reedy wetlands, open forest floors. These layers of vegetation create microhabitats that different warbler species can all use. You don’t need to visit a large forest to find warblers—during migration they’ll often stop over in small patches of woods that offer a chance to refuel on water and food.
Start at the forest edge
One of the best places to find layered habitats is at the forest edge. So don’t hurry past it. Granted, the serenity of a forest trail has its own appeal, but for the most warbler diversity you’ll want to spend some time where the road or trailhead meets the woods. Stand at the edge of the forest, look for motion, and listen for both songs and softer chip notes.
On cold mornings, remember that warblers will gravitate to sunny patches—often high in trees on the eastern edge of the woods—where insects will be warmer and more active. Warblers give themselves away as they flit from branch to branch, or move quickly in the undergrowth, foraging for food.
Listen for Singing Birds
Warblers are so small they can easily hide behind a single leaf—but their voices carry long distances. Use your ears to help you find the birds you want to see.
Warblers have distinctive songs—it’s like they’re telling you what to look for. To help with learning songs, use the Sound ID feature on our free app Merlin Bird ID. Simply open the app, turn on Sound ID, and it will list the species it recognizes and show photos of the bird. It can even play reference recordings so you can check against what you’re hearing.
Try “Pishing”
When songbirds see a threat, they make a variety of high chipping or scolding notes. Other birds in the area hear these calls and come closer to see what’s happening and to help “mob” or chase off the intruder. If you don’t mind sounding a bit silly, you can try mimicking these sounds by “pishing.” It doesn’t always work, but it can be a useful tool to attract the attention of birds and get them to come out into view.
Birders have dozens of ways of making these pishing sounds, and there’s no one right way to do it. To start, try simply repeating the word “pish” for a few seconds. Try louder and quieter volumes, hissing vs. shushing sounds, or even making squeaky or kissy sounds. Scan the vegetation while you’re doing it, and pause after a few seconds to see if you’re getting a reaction. Pishing generally works better from inside a birdy habitat—under a tree canopy or in a brushy area—rather than out in the open.
Take one bird at a time
On a busy migration morning in eastern North America you might find 20+ species of warblers alone. Having so many birds around can get overwhelming. Our advice is to focus on finding one bird at a time and watch it for a while, then move on to the next.
It can be difficult to stay focused—there can be a real sense that you might be missing out on a “cooler” or more exciting bird somewhere else. Other birders around you might call out species you haven’t seen yet. But don’t get distracted trying to get your eyes onto every bird that flits across your view. You’ll likely get frustratingly short glimpses of each bird and may not be able to identify or enjoy as many. Give each bird your full attention—enjoy its colors, watch it sing, note how it moves—and then move on.
Get Familiar with Each Species’ Unique Style
Another way to keep from getting overwhelmed by the sheer variety of warblers is to learn their favorite habits—sort of an individual sense of “style” for each species. Then you can use what you know about to find it more quickly.
For instance, Blackburnian, Black-throated Green, Blackpoll, and Bay-breasted Warblers are usually in the forest canopy. You’ll want to look up high for them.
Others, like Hooded, Blue-winged, Canada, and Mourning Warblers tend to be closer to eye level; and some, like Ovenbirds, are often on the ground.
Waterthrushes stick along stream courses and dip their tails constantly. Cape May Warblers are often found in spruces. Black-and-white Warblers forage along trunks and branches, almost like a nuthatch. American Redstarts flare their wings and flick their tails open, almost as if they want to be seen. As you get to know habits like these, it’ll be easier to spot the birds you hear.
Tap into Migration Timing
When birds migrate, it’s not just a steady push day after day. Warblers typically migrate at night, then spend the following day resting and refueling. If bad weather approaches, such as headwinds or rainstorms, warblers will cut short their night’s trip or delay taking off until conditions improve. On nights with tailwinds, huge pulses of migrants take to the air.
Thanks to advances in weather radar and computing, the BirdCast project can create a 3-day forecast for where in the continental United States migration will be light or heavy. Their Migration Dashboard can estimate the number of birds flying over any state or county in the Lower 48 each night. The info is useful for conservation projects like Lights Out, and it’s also a boon to birdwatchers who want to know which upcoming mornings will have the best birding near them.
Some species have predictable timing within a migration season: Black-and-white Warblers and Louisiana Waterthrushes are among the earliest migrants, while Bay-breasted and Blackpoll Warblers move later. Two good ways to review these patterns are to use eBird Bar Charts or eBird Status and Trends weekly abundance maps. (Here’s an example weekly map for Bay-breasted Warbler.)
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American Kestrel by Blair Dudeck / Macaulay Library