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Black-throated Gray Warbler at Roanoke Island NC



Jeff Lewis wrote:

> It's not looking too good for saturday with NE winds predicted for
> tonight, but you never know. All it takes is one good bird!

Within 5 minutes of my arrival on Roanoke Island on Saturday (Oct 7), I
found that bird.  I observed a Black-throated Gray Warbler in the park
land immediately at the end of the Highway 64 bridge over Croatan Sound,
on the north side of the highway.  It was in the pines inside the short
loop trail across the pond from the parking lot.  The bird was moving
rapidly from tree to tree but I managed to briefly regain view of it in
several different trees before losing track of it.  There were numerous
other warblers in the area, predominately Palm with a few Parulas and
Redstarts and single birds of a couple of other species, but at the time
these birds were foraging mainly at low heights while the Black-throated
Gray was at mid-height in the trees, so it's not clear whether it was
really associated with a flock.  I did not hear any vocalization from
the bird.

Let this be a lesson to us all--at the time I was carrying neither a
field guide nor anything to take notes with, so when I lost the bird I
returned to my car for both.  That probably reduced my chances of
picking it up again.  After more searching I continued down the trail
and returned about an hour after the original sighting, at which time I
met Jeff Lewis's group.  By this time the number of warblers in the area
was much diminished.  We searched for the bird without success, and I
heard that others searched for it throughout the rest of the day.

Black-throated Gray is an unmistakable bird, but for the record,
features that I specifically noted included overall black, white and
gray color pattern; strong head pattern of black cap, black throat, and
white face crossed by a black band; yellow supra-loral spot; and black
streaks along the sides and flanks.  The only other species with any
similarity is an adult male Black-and-White in breeding plumage, but
this bird differed from a Black-and-White in many ways.  The supra-loral
spot by itself is diagnostic, but other differences from Black-and-White
that I noted were that the cap was solid (as well as I could determine
from a low angle), the throat patch was more distinctly set off as a
patch rather than grading into the breast streakings, the black band
across the face continued more solidly to connect with the hindneck, and
the white marks above, and especially below, the band were more
prominent, and the black of the head contrasted with the grayer color of
the back.  The bird's foraging behavior was like that of a "typical"
warbler; it didn't do the distinctive "creeping" foraging behavior that
is characteristic of Black-and-White.  Ex post facto, I'm pretty sure
that while the sides were streaked, the under tail coverts were not.  In
flight, the bird showed extensive white through the length of the tail,
as illustrated in the flight picture in Sibley's guide, and unlike the
more restricted white of a Black-and-White.  How handy to be able to
exploit that feature of Sibley on the very day I purchased the book!

I've seen only a couple of Black-throated Grays before, and none in
fall, so I'm hesitant to guess the age of the bird.  My initial
impression was of an adult male because the black of the head seemed
definitely black, not just dark gray, but the differences between adult
and first-fall males may be more subtle than I had time to observe.  It
seems certain that the bird was not a female because it had a solid
throat patch.