Bird of the Day: Yellow-rumped Warblers on the West Campus

A Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) has been seen on this blog before, when we saw a number of them at Chaw'se a few weeks ago. I've seen a few here on the valley floor on our west campus, and once even on our back porch.

 But I've never seen so many as I did today. I was walking past the sheep pasture on our west campus and saw a lot of small birds hopping on the fence and on the ground near a large walnut tree. Every time a car drove by, two or three dozen birds exploded off the ground and into the tree. I took a closer look.

There were at least three species, including White-crowned Sparrows and possibly a female Western Bluebird, but most of them had the yellow flash of color that gave them away as the Yellow-rumped Warbler. How would you like a name like that?

Beautiful little birds! I expect there will be more of them here in the future...