Photo Study Of Yellow-rumped Warblers At Brigantine, Stone Harbor And Cape May, October 18th, 2010

    We went to E.B. Forsythe NWR ( Brigantine), Stone Harbor And Cape May yesterday and found Yellow-rumped Warblers everywhere. Needless to say, the bright sunshine
    and abundance of this beautiful little bird resulted in a photo op that could not be disregarded. We saw Myrtle adults and 1st winter birds in winter plumage and despite
    their non-stopping motion chasing insects and eating Juniper cones, we had lots of fun taking pictures.

Yellow-rumped Warbler At Cape May State Park

Yellow-rumped Warbler At Higbee's Beach

Yellow-rumped Warbler At The Wetlands Institute, Stone Harbor

Yellow-rumped Warbler At Cape May State Park

Yellow-rumped Warbler At Cape May State Park

Yellow-rumped Warbler At Gull Tower, Brigantine

    The Yellow-rumped Warblers (Dendroica coronata) 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. Yellow-rumped Warblers are fairly large, full-bodied warblers with a large head, sturdy bill, and long, narrow tail.
    In summer, both sexes are a smart gray with flashes of white in the wings and yellow on the face, sides, and rump. Males are very strikingly shaded; females are duller and may
    show some brown.

Male Myrtle Yellow-rumped Warbler At
Bergey's Mill, Montgomery County, June 2009

    Winter birds are paler brown, with bright yellow rumps and usually some yellow on the sides. In summer, Yellow-rumped Warblers are birds of open coniferous forests and
    edges, and to a lesser extent deciduous forests. In fall and winter they move to open woods and shrubby habitats, including coastal vegetation, parks, and residential areas.
    The Yellow-rumped Warbler has two distinct subspecies that used to be considered separate species: the "Myrtle" of the eastern U.S. and Canada's boreal forest, and
    "Audubon’s" of the mountainous West. The Audubon’s has a yellow throat; in the Myrtle subspecies the throat is white.

Male Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler At
The Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix,AZ, February 2007

    Male Audubon's warblers have more white in the wing than the Myrtle warbler. Female Audubon's have less distinctly marked faces, lacking the dark ear patches of the
    Myrtle. Intermediate forms occur where the two subspecies' breeding ranges overlap, such as in the Canadian Rockies. The Yellow-rumped Warbler breeds from eastern
    North America west to the Pacific, and southward from there into western Mexico. It is a migratory bird and while many of them travel to Central America and the
    Caribbean for the winter, many stay right here in North America. Also, those who did leave are among the first to return. (Cornell BNA; Wikipedia; Sibley Guide
    To Birds)

    To see a larger image of any of the photos below, please click on either the thumbnails or the captions...thanks! The red captions indicate the photos taken at Cape May;
    the black captions the photos taken at The Wetlands Institute at Stone Harbor, and the green captions, the photos taken at Brigantine.,

 Howard B. Eskin 2010       Please email your comments to hbeskin@voicenet.com      Please click here to go back to Bird Webpage Index