Status and Conservation
The Cerulean Warbler is the fastest declining neotropical migrant songbird. Among the many threats they face, their wintering habitat in the northern Andes is dwindling rapidly. Cerulean Warblers depend on shade coffee plantations during the winter. This traditional farming technique is at risk as coffee prices fluctuate and pressure to switch to higher-yield sun coffee or other crops intensifies.
In fragmented forest areas, this bird is vulnerable to nest parasitism by the Brown-headed Cowbird. This bird's numbers are declining faster than any other warbler species in the USA; its population in 2006 was less than one-fifth of what it was 40 years before. The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is working with its Colombian partner, Fundación ProAves, to protect wintering habitat for Cerulean Warblers and other migrating songbirds. Together they have created the Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve, the first protected area created for a neotropical migrant. In an effort to advance protection of the Cerulean Warbler, ABC and its South American partners (Fundacion ProAves, ECOAN and Fundacion Jocotoco), in 2009 produced a Cerulean Warbler Wintering Ground Conservation Plan.
The Cerulean Warbler has been recorded as a vagrant to Iceland.
Read more about this topic: Cerulean Warbler
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