Feeding Behavior

Searches for insects among branches, twigs, and bases of leaves, moving rapidly between foraging sites. Frequently hovers to take insects from underside of leaves. Occasionally catches insects in mid-air. Males tend to forage higher than females while breeding. In late summer, often forages in mixed flocks with chickadees.

Eggs

4, sometimes 3-5. Gray to creamy white with spots or scrawls of reddish brown. Only female incubates, 12 days. In some areas, up to one-third of nests are parasitized by cowbirds. Young: Nestlings are fed only by female at first, later by male. Young leave nest 11 days after hatching. Parents split up the fledglings, each adult tending half the brood for up to 1 month.

Young

Nestlings are fed only by female at first, later by male. Young leave nest 11 days after hatching. Parents split up the fledglings, each adult tending half the brood for up to 1 month.

Diet

Insects, especially caterpillars. Feeds mainly on non-hairy caterpillars during summer, as well as beetles, true bugs, gnats, aphids, and others, also spiders. Takes poison ivy berries and other berries in migration. In winter, may eat protein corpuscles of tropical cecropia trees.

Nesting

Males establish territories by singing, also by chasing and fighting with intruding males. Nest sites are next to trunk where two or more small branches fork out of conifer, usually low (often only a few feet above ground). The race nesting in southern swamps places its nest well out from trunk, and often higher (to 50' or more above ground). Nest (built by both sexes) is open cup of twigs, grass, weeds, bark, spiderwebs, lined with plant fibers, hair, moss, and feathers.