Maine is home to some very exotic looking bird species. Take the blackburnian warbler, for example. Maine has lots of blackburnian warblers.

By some estimates, as much as 15 percent of the world population of this gorgeous little bird nests in our state. Most Mainers have never seen a blackburnian warbler. If they are shown a photo of one, they generally express astonishment that such a brightly colored tropical-looking bird can not only be found in Maine but could even be relatively common.

The Boothbay region has lots of good habitat for blackburnian warblers since in the breeding season, they love the tall, thick spruce trees that are quite abundant in many parts of our area.

One reason that people don’t see blackburnian warblers, or see them more often, is because this species loves to stay hidden way up in the tops of those tall spruce trees, and their song is high-pitched and easily missed.

Consider that the bird is smaller than a chickadee and you can see why someone could go a lifetime with a blackburnian warbler in their very own yard without ever knowing it!

If you do get a decent look at a blackburnian warbler, it’s hard not to be astonished by its brightness. The male has an intensely orange throat and head contrasting with white belly and black and white upperparts. In the female, the orange is replaced by a more mellow, but still beautiful, glowing yellow.

Blackburnian warblers spend most of the year living a tropical life, foraging for insects in the mid-elevational slopes of the northern Andes of South America. They can be seen quite commonly in popular birding places like the Tandayapa Valley of Ecuador.

They arrive here in Maine usually about the first or second week in May. The males arrive first and immediately begin setting up territories by singing from premium high spruce tops. A careful eye can sometimes spot them tipping back their head and belting out their high-pitched songs. One of the typical song types ends with a rising note that seems to disappear into the stratosphere beyond human hearing range.

The female builds the nest at the tip of a spruce branch high up in the tree, lays three to five eggs, and incubates them until they hatch in just under two weeks time. The male feeds the female while she incubates and then helps feed the nestlings, which are probably on their own in less than two weeks. In our area, blackburnian warblers are probably feeding young by now.

There are many places to look for them, but good spots include the Boothbay Region Land Trust’s Ocean Point Preserve, Porter Preserve, Linekin Preserve and Gregory Trail, and on the trails at the Botanical Gardens.

Dr. Jeff Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative. During his time at the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology and as the Audubon Society's national bird conservation director, Dr. Wells earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. Jeff's grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, also formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a widely published natural history writer and a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Together, they have been writing and teaching people about birds for decades. The Maine natives are authors of the highly acclaimed book, “Maine's Favorite Birds.”