Yellow-rumped Warbler

The Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) is a North American bird species combining four closely related 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). [Wikipedia]

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warblers are impressive in the sheer numbers with which they flood the continent each fall. Shrubs and trees fill with the streaky brown-and-yellow birds and their distinctive, sharp chips. Though the color palette is subdued all winter, you owe it to yourself to seek these birds out on their spring migration or on their breeding grounds. Spring molt brings a transformation, leaving them a dazzling mix of bright yellow, charcoal gray and black, and bold white. [All About Birds]

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler Facts [All About Birds]

• The Yellow-rumped Warbler is the only warbler able to digest the waxes found in bayberries and wax myrtles. Its ability to use these fruits allows it to winter farther north than other warblers, sometimes as far north as Newfoundland.

• Yellow-rumped Warblers are perhaps the most versatile foragers of all warblers. They’re the warbler you’re most likely to see fluttering out from a tree to catch a flying insect, and they’re also quick to switch over to eating berries in fall. 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.

• When Yellow-rumped Warblers find themselves foraging with other warbler species, they typically let Palm, Magnolia and Black-throated Green warblers do as they wish, but they assert themselves over Pine and Blackburnian warblers.

• The oldest recorded Yellow-rumped Warbler was at least 7 years old.