![]() The ability to use these fruits allows it to winter farther north than other warblers, sometimes as far north as Newfoundland. It is the only warbler able to digest such waxy material. When bugs are scarce, the myrtle warbler also eats fruit, including the wax-myrtle berries which gave it its name. They also eat spruce budworm, a serious forest pest, during outbreaks. ![]() Common foods include caterpillars and other larvae, leaf beetles, bark beetles, weevils, ants, scale insects, aphids, grasshoppers, caddisflies, craneflies, and gnats, as well as spiders. Other places yellow-rumped warblers have been spotted foraging include picking at insects on washed-up seaweed at the beach, skimming insects from the surface of rivers and the ocean, picking them out of spiderwebs, and grabbing them off piles of manure. Beyond gleaning from leaves like other New World warblers, they often flit, flycatcher-like, out from their perches in short loops, to catch flying insects. In addition to being what are perhaps the most versatile foragers of all warblers, these birds have a prodigious digestive capability and can eat poisonous plants and venomous insects with gustatorial aplomb. Goldman’s warbler, of Guatemala, resembles Audubon’s but has a white lower border to the yellow throat and otherwise darker plumage males replace the slate blue of Audubon’s with black.Īs one of North America’s most abundant neotropical migrants, the yellow-rumped warblers are primarily insectivorous. ![]() Females of both forms are more dull, with brown streaking front and back, but still have noticeable yellow rumps. Audubon’s warbler also sports a yellow throat patch, while the myrtle warbler has a white throat and eye stripe, and a contrasting black cheek patch. In summers, males of both forms have streaked backs of black on slate blue, white wing patches, a streaked breast, and conspicuous yellow patches on the crown, flank, and rump. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 2.5 inches to 3.3 inches, the tail is 2.0 inches to 2.6 inches, the bill is0.31 inch to 0.43 inch and the tarsus is 0.71 inch to 0.87 inch. Body mass can vary from 0.35 ounces to 0.62 ounces, though it averages between 11 and 14 g (0.39 and 0.49 ounce). In total length, the species can range from 4.7 inches to 5.9 inches long, with a wingspan of 7.5 inches to 9.4 inches. This is a mid-sized New World warbler, though it is one of the largest species in the Setophaga genus (formerly Dendroica) which comprises a lion’s share of the species in the family. On their tropical wintering grounds they live in mangroves, thorn scrub, pine-oak-fir forests, and shade coffee plantations. During winter, yellow-rumped warblers find open areas with fruiting shrubs or scattered trees, such as parks, streamside woodlands, open pine and pine-oak forest, dunes (where bayberries are common), and residential areas. In the Pacific Northwest and the Northeastern U.S., they occur all the way down to sea level wherever conifers are present. and in the Appalachians, they are found mostly in mountainous areas. ![]() Yellow-rumped warblers spend the breeding season in mature coniferous and mixed coniferous-deciduous woodlands, such as in patches of aspen, birch, or willow. It is an occasional vagrant to the British Isles and Iceland. Among warblers it is by far the most widespread in North America in winter, and in the northern and central parts of the continent, it is among the last to leave in the fall and among the first to return. The myrtle and Audubon’s forms are migratory, traveling to the southern U.S., Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for winters. “Goldman’s” yellow-rumped warbler is endemic to the highlands of Guatemala. The yellow-rumped warbler breeds from eastern North America west to the Pacific, and southward from there into Western Mexico. Some male myrtle warblers have a black “mask”. The myrtle form was apparently separated from the others by glaciation during the Pleistocene, and the Audubon’s form may have originated more recently through hybridization between the myrtle warbler and the Mexican nigrifrons form.Īdult male yellow-rumped warblers have slate-blue backs and yellow crowns. The yellow-rumped warbler is a bird that is present in San Bernardino County.įour closely related North American bird forms-the eastern myrtle warbler (ssp coronata), its western counterpart, Audubon’s warbler (ssp group auduboni), the northwest Mexican black-fronted warbler (ssp nigrifrons), and the Guatemalan Goldman’s warbler (ssp goldmani)- since 1973 have been lumped together by the American Ornithologists’ Union as the yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata).Īccording to the American Ornithologists’ Union, these passerine birds are regarded as one species, though they proliferate in different locations. ![]()
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