Hume's leaf warbler facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hume's leaf warbler |
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| At 10,000 feet (3,000 m) ASL in Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh, India | |
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Phylloscopus humei humei (Brooks, 1878) |
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The Hume's leaf warbler (its scientific name is Phylloscopus humei) is a tiny leaf warbler bird. It lives and has its babies in the mountains of central Asia. This warbler is a migratory bird, which means it travels long distances. It spends its winters mainly in India.
The bird's English name, Hume's warbler, and its scientific name humei honor Allan Octavian Hume. He was a British government worker and bird expert in India. The name Phylloscopus comes from ancient Greek words. Phullon means "leaf," and skopos means "seeker" or "watcher." This name fits because these birds often look for food among leaves.
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What Does Hume's Warbler Look Like?
Hume's leaf warbler is one of the smallest "Old World warblers." Like most other leaf warblers, it has greenish feathers on its back and off-white feathers on its belly. It looks very similar to the yellow-browed warbler (P. inornatus).
It has a long, light stripe above its eye called a supercilium. It also has a stripe on its head and yellow edges on its wing feathers. However, the Hume's warbler usually has only one clear light bar on its wing. It might have a very faint second wing bar. Its colors are also generally duller than the yellow-browed warbler. It has a dark lower part of its beak and dark legs.
Sounds and Calls
The song of the Hume's warbler is a high-pitched, buzzing sound. The best way to tell it apart from the yellow-browed warbler is by its call. The Hume's warbler's call sounds more like two syllables. Even though the eastern and western Hume's warblers have small differences in their calls and DNA, their songs are the same. They are usually not seen as separate species.
Where Does Hume's Warbler Live?
This bird is common in mountain forests, living at heights up to 3,500 meters (about 11,500 feet) above sea level. It lives from the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains in the west. Its range extends east and north to the Tien Shan mountains in China and the Altay Mountains in Mongolia.
A different group of these birds, called mandellii (also known as Mandell's leaf warbler), lives on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Sometimes, this group is considered a full separate species. Both groups of Hume's warblers fly over the Himalayas to spend winter in India and nearby areas.
Sometimes, especially during their autumn migration, these tiny warblers can fly far off course. They have been seen as far away as western Europe, even though that is 3,000 km (about 1,860 miles) from their breeding places. They are rarely seen in Great Britain in late autumn and winter.
Behavior and Diet
Hume's warblers are not shy birds. However, they can be hard to spot because they live in trees and their colors help them blend in. They are always moving. Like most "Old World warblers," this small bird eats insects. They build their nests on the ground.
This species is common across its large habitat. Because of this, the IUCN (a group that tracks animal populations) does not consider Hume's leaf-warbler to be threatened.
How Hume's Warbler is Different from Other Birds
Scientists recently decided that Hume's leaf warbler is a separate species from the yellow-browed warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus). They made this decision based on how the birds look, their sounds, and their DNA.
The area where western Hume's leaf warblers live overlaps with where yellow-browed warblers live in the western Sayan Mountains. But the two species do not seem to breed together. Scientists think that the Hume's warbler and the yellow-browed warbler became separate species about 2.5 million years ago. The two groups of Hume's warblers (P. h. humei and P. h. mandelli) separated about 1 million years ago.
