Warblers
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40 free Warblers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Warblers are the birds that turn a casual walker into a birder. They are small, restless and often brilliantly colored, and every spring they move north through woods and city parks in a rush that is over almost as soon as it starts. Telling them apart is a rite of passage, and the stories behind them are as rewarding as the field marks. This quiz concentrates on the wood-warblers of the New World, with a handful of questions on the Old World birds that share the name but not the ancestry. Expect nests in strange places, record-setting journeys, species named after places they hardly ever visit, a bird that surfaced in a famous spy hearing, and the conservation stories behind the rarest members of the family. It is pitched for backyard birders and seasoned listers alike. The early questions are friendly, the later ones dig into taxonomy and history, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of North America's warblers flies nonstop over the Atlantic for up to three days each autumn?
Blackpoll warbler
The blackpoll warbler nearly doubles its body mass before leaving, then crosses about 2,500 km of open water to reach South America or the Greater Antilles.
Q 02Rare Kirtland's warblers of the Great Lakes nest almost only among young stands of which tree?
Jack pine
Jack pine suits Kirtland's warbler only while the trees are young and dense, a habitat once renewed by wildfire and now made by harvesting old stands and planting seedlings.
Q 03Which songbird of the warbler family builds a domed nest with a side entrance on the forest floor?
Ovenbird
The ovenbird is named for that nest, known as the "oven", which is woven from vegetation. Nesting on the ground exposes its young to snakes, red squirrels and chipmunks.
Q 04Which brood parasite's eggs do yellow warblers often bury under a fresh layer of nesting material?
Brown-headed cowbird
The brown-headed cowbird regularly lays in yellow warbler nests. A warbler that spots the intruder's egg usually gives up its own eggs too and lays a replacement clutch.
Q 05Which crop, when grown under a canopy of shade trees, gives wintering warblers valuable habitat?
Coffee
Coffee grown the traditional way under shade gives farms in Chiapas, Mexico, a bird richness rivaled only by the region's natural forest, while unshaded fields hold far fewer species.
Q 06The endangered golden-cheeked warbler breeds in juniper-oak woodland found in only which US state?
Texas
Texas is the only place the golden-cheeked warbler nests, in the central part of the state, because it depends on fine strips of Ashe juniper bark to build its nest.
Q 07Which of the wood-warblers creeps up and down tree trunks like a nuthatch, probing bark for food?
Black-and-white warbler
The black-and-white warbler hunts insects and spiders on trunks and limbs, a habit that sets it apart from most wood-warblers, and it is the only species in its genus, Mniotilta.
Q 08Which wetland-loving bird of the warbler family is recognized by the male's black face mask?
Common yellowthroat
The common yellowthroat was once nicknamed the "yellow bandit" for that mask, which females lack and young males only grow in fully by their first spring.
Q 09The northern parula often hides its nest inside hanging clumps of which plant of southern swamps?
Spanish moss
Spanish moss is hollowed out by the female, who then fills the pocket with plant fibers and animal hair. Elsewhere the birds nest in clumps of beard lichen instead.
Q 10What is the birders' term for severe weather forcing exhausted migrating warblers to land en masse?
A fallout
A fallout is uncommon because it takes a chance run of high winds or rain to ground tired migrants, which is why birders prize the crowds of birds resting in one spot.
Q 11A sighting of which swamp bird on the Potomac helped link Alger Hiss to Whittaker Chambers?
Prothonotary warbler
The prothonotary warbler came up when Chambers testified that Hiss had bragged of seeing one. Hiss later confirmed the sighting, convincing many on the committee that the two men knew each other.
Q 12Which abundant songbird is the only one of the warblers that can digest waxy wax-myrtle berries?
Yellow-rumped warbler
The yellow-rumped warbler's eastern form is called the myrtle warbler after those berries, which it turns to when bugs are scarce. Birders nickname the species "butter butt".
Q 13The "start" in the name American redstart comes from an old word for which part of a bird?
Tail
Q 21The Cape May warbler is named for a cape in which US state, where the first specimen was collected?
New Jersey
New Jersey gave the bird its name on the strength of a single specimen, yet the species was not recorded at Cape May again for another 100 years.
Q 22Linnaeus first classed the northern parula, namesake of the family Parulidae, as which kind of bird?
A tit
A tit is what he called it in 1758, as Parus americanus. The genus name was later modified to Parulus and then Parula, which gave the family its name.
Q 23Which pioneer of American ornithology named both the Tennessee warbler and the Connecticut warbler?
Alexander Wilson
Tail is the old meaning of "start", and the male American redstart flashes the bright patches on its tail to startle prey out of the underbrush.
Q 14Which of the warblers, a southern swamp bird that wintered in Cuba, was declared extinct in 2023?
Bachman's warbler
Bachman's warbler was last seen beyond dispute in the 1960s. A contested 1988 report kept hope alive until US officials struck it from the endangered list as extinct.
Q 15The wood warbler, a songbird of Europe's beech and oak woods, winters in which part of the world?
Tropical Africa
Tropical Africa takes in the entire population each winter. The bird's Latin species name, sibilatrix, means a female whistler.
Q 16Warblers belong to which order of perching birds, the largest order and home to most bird species?
Passeriformes
Passeriformes takes its name from the Latin for sparrow and holds some 6,500 species, about 60% of all birds, in more than 140 families.
Q 17Most members of the New World warbler family feed mainly on which kind of food?
Insects
Insects are the staple for most of the family, which likely arose in northern Central America, where the greatest number of species is still found.
Q 18The breeding male Blackburnian warbler is best known for a throat of which vivid color?
Orange
Orange so bright it is described as flaming marks the male's throat. The bird's name honors Anna Blackburne, an English botanist.
Q 19Which songbird, long ranked the largest wood-warbler, was moved to a family of its own in 2017?
Yellow-breasted chat
The yellow-breasted chat now sits alone in the family Icteriidae, and studies point to the New World blackbirds as its closest living relatives.
Q 20By the mid-1900s, Kirtland's warblers bred only in a small part of which US state?
Michigan
Michigan held the entire breeding range until numbers grew; pairs have since nested in Wisconsin and southern Ontario. The first nest ever found was by the Au Sable River in 1903.
Alexander Wilson named each for the place a specimen turned up, though the first bird only passes through Tennessee on migration and the second rarely visits Connecticut.
Q 24Brewster's warbler and Lawrence's warbler are not true species but which kind of bird?
Hybrids
Hybrids of golden-winged and blue-winged warblers take these two forms: Brewster's, gray above, is the more common, and Lawrence's, greenish-yellow above, is the rarer.
Q 25A band of dark streaks across the chest gives which of the warblers the nickname "necklaced"?
Canada warbler
The Canada warbler flies by night on its way to winter in northern South America, where it forages in mixed flocks with other birds.
Q 26Tennessee warbler numbers rise and fall with outbreaks of which forest caterpillar, a favorite food?
Spruce budworm
Spruce budworm is the Tennessee warbler's preferred food, and the bay-breasted warbler also feeds heavily on the caterpillar in the breeding season.
Q 27Gilbert White was among the first to tell chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler apart by what?
Their songs
Their songs gave the three look-alikes away, as White set out in 1789 in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.
Q 28The Dartford warbler was named from specimens taken near Dartford, a town in which English county?
Kent
Kent's Bexley Heath supplied the two specimens. The species almost died out in Britain in the severe winter of 1962–63, when only a handful of pairs were left.
Q 29Which Old World warbler's rich, varied voice earned it the nickname "mock nightingale"?
Eurasian blackcap
The Eurasian blackcap has also been called the country nightingale, and it occasionally mimics other birds, including the nightingale itself.
Q 30Which genus, named "moth eater" in Greek, absorbed most of the warblers once placed in Dendroica?
Setophaga
Setophaga won out because the name dates from 1827 and so takes priority over Dendroica, published in 1842; 29 species changed genus as a result.