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Yellow-browed Warbler
Conservation status
Least Concern
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Phylloscopidae Genus: Phylloscopus Species: P. inornatus
Binomial name
Phylloscopus inornatus (Blyth, 1842)

The Yellow-browed Warbler or Inornate Warbler, (Phylloscopus inornatus) is a leaf warbler which breeds in Asia east from the Urals to China. This warbler is strongly migratory and winters in southeast Asia.

This is an abundant bird of lowland and mountain woodlands. The nest is built in a tree. Like most Old World warblers, this small passerine is insectivorous.

There were formerly considered to be three subspecies, but humei and mandellii are now split as a separate species, the Hume's Leaf Warbler (Sangster et al., 2002) based on differences in morphology (Shirihai & Madge, 1993), bioacoustics (Alström & Olsson, 1988; Irwin et al., 2001), and molecular characters (Irwin et al., 2001). The Western Hume's Leaf Warbler's range overlaps with that of the Yellow-browed Warbler in the western Sayan Mountains (Ernst, 1996), but the species apparently do not hybridize (Irwin et al., 2001); the two species diverged roughly 2,5 mya ago (Irwin et al., 2001).

This tiny warbler is prone to vagrancy as far as western Europe in late September and October, despite a 3000 km distance from its breeding grounds. For example, this species occurs in late autumn in Great Britain regularly enough that it is not classified as rare there.

This is one of the smallest warblers, 9.5-10 cm long, and shares greenish upperparts and off-white underparts with typical leaf warblers. However, it has prominent double wing bars and long supercilia. The only real possibility of confusion is with Hume's Leaf Warbler, which has duller colours, a faint second wing bar and dark legs and lower mandible, in the limited area of overlap; their vocalizations are clearly distinct.

This bird is not shy, but its arboreal life style makes it difficult to observe. It is constantly in motion. Its song is weak and high pitched; the call is faintly disyllabic.

• Alström, Per & Olsson, U. (1988): Taxonomy of Yellow-browed Warblers. British Birds 81: 656–657.

• BirdLife International (2004). Phylloscopus inornatus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

• Ernst, S. (1996) Zweiter Beitrag zur Vogelwelt des Östlichen Altai. Mitteilungen aus dem Zoologischen Museum Berlin 72, Suppl. Ann. Ornithol. 20: 123–180. [Article in German]

• Irwin, D. E.; Alström, Per; Olsson, U. & Benowitz-Fredericks, Z. M. (2001): Cryptic species in the genus Phylloscopus (Old World leaf warblers). Ibis 143(2): 233–247. PDF fulltext

• Sangster, George; Knox, Alan G.; Helbig, Andreas J. & Parkin, David T. (2002): Taxonomic recommendations for European birds. Ibis 144(1): 153–159. doi:10.1046/j.0019-1019.2001.00026.x PDF fulltext

• Shirihai, H. & Madge, S. (1993): Identification of Hume's Yellow-browed Warbler. Birding World 6: 439–443.