Bird of the Day: Yellow-rumped Warbler at Chaw'se State Park

To the surprise of perhaps no one, I was on the road again, this week with a field class studying the geology of the California Mother Lode. We made a stop at Chaw'se (Indian Grinding Rock) State Park near the town of Volcano to have a look at a gigantic slab of marble covered by more than a thousand grinding mortars.

It had rained a little in the last few days, so there were lots of small birds out and about, playing in what they must have assumed were little personal birdbaths. I identified eight or nine bird species, but these little Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) did the best before the camera today.

The species is quite common, although I am chagrined to say that I had not noticed them prior to the start of my neighborhood odyssey of birding last November. I've now seen them up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, on the west campus of my college (see the last picture below), and one morning last winter, on my back porch, catching bugs around the porch light like a little bat.

They have a more intense coloration during the breeding season, as evidenced by this shot (below) of a visitor to my third floor corridor on the west campus. It held still long enough for three or four shots.