The Pine Warbler is a sturdy, unhurried warbler of pine country — olive-green above and yellow on the throat and breast, with two white wing bars, blurry olive streaks on the sides, and a fairly plain face set off by a yellow crescent below the eye. It lacks any bold mark, and that very plainness, together with its strong tie to pines, is the clue; females and immatures are duller and greyer-brown.
As its name promises it is rarely found away from pines, creeping along trunks and branches and probing bark and cones. Alone among the wood-warblers it eats seeds in quantity — pine seeds especially, and at winter feeders it will take millet, sunflower and suet — which lets it winter farther north than most of its family. It nests high in a pine, placing a deep cup near the end of a branch.
In Maine the Pine Warbler breeds in stands of pitch and white pine and is among the very first warblers back in spring, when the male's even, musical trill rings from the canopy before the leaves are out. That canopy habit makes it a challenge — the bird stays high in the pines — so the realistic chances come at feeders in early spring or where a singing male drops to a lower branch. Listen first; the trill places the bird.
The Pine Warbler is listed as Least Concern and its population is stable or increasing, tied to the extensive pine forests of the eastern United States and helped by its willingness to use feeders in winter. It depends on mature pines for nesting and foraging, so its fortunes follow the management of southern and eastern pine woods. It faces no broad threat at present.