This is Bird Note.

The Golden Cheeked Warbler is a star performer.

Boldly dressed in yellow, black and white.

These little birds and their buzzy song take center stage in Texas Hill Country.

The Golden Cheeked Warbler is an endangered species, and the only bird that nests exclusively in central Texas.

Males arrive in March to stake out a territory in the juniper oak woodlands.

The older the trees, the better.

While the female handles most of the nest construction and defense, both parents bring

home the bugs to their hungry chicks.

Look for them chasing insects on the wing or gleaning grubs from high in the canopy.

By the end of July, the warblers are on their way back to mountain forests of southern Mexico and Central America.

Golden-cheeked warblers can't survive without healthy, mature woodlands,

but deforestation has destroyed and fragmented much of their habitat across the Americas.

Now, this special songbird's future depends on people stepping up to protect our forests,

from Nicaragua to Texas.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.

This episode is dedicated to naturalist Dave Sutherland from Boulder, Colorado, who is

taught so many, so much.