American Redstart - Ross Feldner

This flashy oriole look alike is actually a warbler! Its genus name, Setophaga, is from the Ancient Greek word that mean moth eater.

The American Redstart is considered one of the most stable and abundant species of North American warblers. Its breeding territory spans southern Canada and the Eastern US. It is migratory, wintering in Central America, the West Indies and northern South America. When wintering it is often found in shade-grown coffee plantations.

American Redstarts prefer open-canopy deciduous forests and forest edges where they feed on insects almost exclusively. The insects are caught by “flycatching” and sometimes by gleaning from leaves. Its diet is largely moths, flies, caterpillars, wasps, beetles, aphids and spiders.

The breeding habitats of the redstarts are open woodlands or scrub, often located near water. They nest in the lower part of a bush, laying 2–5 eggs in a neat cup-shaped nest.

Successful conservation efforts of the redstart, and other migrating birds, include protecting and providing habitat throughout its entire range. The benefits to coffee farms that redstarts and other "coffee birds" provide have encouraged coffee farmers to adapt shade trees and adjacent forest patches in their farming practices as additional habitat for the birds.