I’m slow-birding, watching for activity in my favorite bush—a large, spreading red-osier dogwood—when a bright yellow bird lands right in the middle. He moves along the branches, searching for food, and stops every few seconds to sing, “sweet sweet I’m so sweet.”
He will spend his day searching for insects, his exclusive dietary choice. The bird is buttery yellow—a few shades darker than the neon yellow of the goldfinches who are molting into their spring brightness. I can see fine reddish-chestnut streaks on his breast. A Yellow Warbler! I know that this bird is a male because the stripes on the breast of females are much fainter or absent. When I get a good, close look at a Yellow Warbler, one of my favorite features is the shiny black eyes.
Singing Yellow Warbler (photo by Gary Shackelford). Note the chestnut streaks on his chest.
Yellow Warblers are one the earliest of the warblers to arrive in the spring and the first to leave in the fall. Of the warbler I watched, who arrived on April 30, my husband Gary said, “It’s early this year.” Last year, we saw the first Yellow Warbler on May 1. During the following week, many more Yellow Warblers arrived to seek territories and nesting sites in the willow and dogwood thickets in the sedge meadows. Other favorite habitats for Yellow Warblers are riparian areas. These warblers prefer nesting sites about four to eight feet off the ground, where they weave their neat, cup-shaped nests of grass, bark strips, and downy materials from cottonwoods, dandelions, and cattails. Having said that, this past week we found a nest about 20 feet high in a black cherry tree, near the end of a branch. We speculated about the identity of the builder. Gary proclaimed that it could not be the nest of a Yellow Warbler because it was too high. We watched the nest for the next several days and identified the owners—they were indeed Yellow Warblers!
Yellow Warbler nest in a multiflora rose containing two Yellow Warbler eggs and one Brown-headed Cowbird egg on the left (photo by Gary Shackelford).
Yellow Warbler nests are often parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds. If this occurs early in the nesting cycle, when the warblers have laid either no eggs or only a few of their own, their interesting response is to bury all these eggs and proceed to nest in a layer on top. These are called “burial nests” and have been recorded with up to six layers! However, some Yellow Warblers may abandon the nest or proceed to raise the cowbirds, sometimes alongside their own offspring.
Yellow Warblers are abundant and found throughout North America. In winter, they migrate to Central and South America. If you travel to the Caribbean or to coastal Mexico or northern South America, you may enjoy seeing two other non-migratory groups of Yellow Warblers. In the Caribbean, Golden Warblers have chestnut caps and in Mexico, Mangrove Warblers have chestnut hoods. But before you go all that way, please visit Fair Meadows Sanctuary and search the willow thickets and that cherry tree to see our own beautiful Yellow Warblers.
Written by Penny Shackelford, Fair Meadows Sanctuary resident manager
Cover image: A female Yellow Warbler gathers downy materials for a nest (photo by Gary Shackelford).
