The black-throated gray warbler or black-throated grey warbler (Setophaga nigrescens) is a passerine bird of the New World warbler family Parulidae. It is long and has gray and white plumage with black markings. The male has the bold black throat of its name, and black stripes on its head, as well as black streaks on its flanks; the female is a paler version of the male, with a white throat and less distinct black markings on the flanks and wings. It breeds in western North America from British Columbia to New Mexico, and winters in Mexico and the southwestern United States. The habitats it prefers are coniferous and mixed forests and scrubland, especially those with pinyon pines, junipers, sagebrush, and oaks. Its nest is an open cup of plant fibers lined with feathers, built a few metres from the ground in the branches of a tree or shrub. Three to five eggs are laid, and young are fed by both parents. Common in its breeding range, it does not seem to be seriously threatened by human activities, unlike many migratory warblers. Taxonomy The black-throated gray warbler was first described by John Kirk Townsend from a specimen collected near today's Portland, Oregon. It was known to the Chinook inhabitants of the northwest coast, who called it Ah Kah a qual. Townsend described the species as Sylvia nigrescens, placing it with the other New World warblers and the unrelated Old World warblers in the genus Sylvia. It is now placed in the genus Setophaga along with about thirty other species, after having been classified in Dendroica for some time. Within its genus, it is part of a group with black throats and yellow face markings that includes the hermit warbler and Townsend's warbler. It is usually considered an early offshoot among this group of species, but genetic studies suggest a close relation to Grace's warbler. Of these relatives, the range of the black-throated gray warbler overlaps with those of Townsend's warbler and the hermit warbler, but they occur in different habitats. While Townsend's and hermit warblers commonly hybridize with each other, records of either species hybridizing with the black-throated gray warbler are uncommon. There are two subspecies, which are highly similar and of dubious validity. The nominate subspecies S. n. nigrescens occurs on the Pacific coastal region from British Columbia to northern California, while S. n. halseii, described by Giraud in 1841,