The Stages of Birding: Yellow-rumped Warblers on the West Campus

I've been at this birding thing for about five years now, which marks me as a rank amateur, but by now I've started to recognize that there are "levels" of birding that for me run something like the following:

1) Total Ignorance: One is vaguely aware that birds are out there, but they're all pigeons, sparrows, crows, and mockingbirds. Birders are strange alien-like people with strange obsessions related to "life-lists" and "first-of-season". Colorful birds are interesting, but known to only live in other places.

2) First Stage Amateur: Somewhere along the way, one sees a very unusual bird, and has no good way of finding out what it was. They then take that tentative first step in birding by asking someone they know to be an expert what the species is, and are surprised to find that bird is actually common in the area, if one knows to watch for it. Experienced birders are still considered strange, but a little less so, in an eccentrically wise sort of way.

3) Second Stage Amateur: Having learned that there are many more birds in the region besides pigeons and sparrows and crows, one takes that ominous and tentative step of buying a bird book (by the time you've asked the expert about seven or eight times you realize you could try doing it yourself). Even though the book may be introductory in nature, one is shocked to find that bird species in the region number in the hundreds. This is a perilous moment, as some are overwhelmed by this complexity, give up, and fall away. Realizing the full breadth of the knowledge base of experienced birders, they are now considered demigods.

4) Tertiary Stage Amateur: One buys a camera with a good zoom lens. And binoculars. And a real bird book, like Sibleys or Audubon's. One starts altering the itinerary of vacations to include potential bird discoveries. But one isn't like those other birders with their life-lists and all. One just happens to like taking pictures of birds. Thousands of pictures of birds.

5) Quaternary Stage Amateur: One finds that he/she is keeping track of observed bird species, sometimes on a random sheet of paper, or perhaps even on a downloaded list of birds from the county or state. One day this person looks at the list and thinks "that's a lot of birds I've identified"...and they count them. They have passed into the realm of "life-list". This stage is completed when they start recording their finds on eBird or similar sites on the internet. Friends and family start asking them about the identity of some unusual bird they've observed. And the amateur knows many or most of the species...

6) First Stage Expert: I have no idea. I haven't reached that stage. And they're demigods anyway, something that we mere mortals cannot aspire to.

All in fun of course, but I started thinking about this amateur/beginning birder thing because of the Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) I saw today in the sheep compound on the West Campus of Modesto Junior College. I was remembering how rare they seemed to be when I was just beginning to pay close attention to bird species, and how shocked I was to find that they were living by the dozens in the Mulberry tree in my own backyard. I ultimately realized they were a very common bird in the region at the right time of year, and I started to pay a bit less attention to them as I searched for rarer species. They were so flighty and active that I had trouble getting good photographs of them anyway.

But this afternoon I was standing next to a fence watching an Oak Titmouse build a nest, and I was so motionless that the birds came out of hiding, and a couple of the warblers perched on branches only a few feet away. They were just begging to be photographed, so I did. The opening picture of this post is by far the closest I've ever been to these birds. They are mostly going to be gone in a few weeks, moving up into the mountains to breed, and I'm realizing how much I'll miss them.

Winsome Little Warblers of the Yellow-rumped Kind in the MJC Mini-wilderness

I see that it has been an entire month since I've posted pictures of Yellow-rumped Warblers (also called Audubon's Warblers, latin name Setophaga coronata). It's hard not to. They are attractive little birds, and they are all over our campus in west Modesto. They are one of the most common species that I see in the central plaza area of the school.

We are getting on towards spring, so they may soon be leaving for their summer breeding grounds, which could be far to the north, or possibly in higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada (I've seen them on the road to Glacier Point at elevations of almost 8,000 feet).

In the meantime, it's fun to try and get decent pictures of these extremely active foragers. I got lucky in the last few trips around the campus and caught a couple of sharp shots I was happy with.

Audubon's (Yellow-rumped) Warbler Hiding in Plain Sight

There have been precious few chances for birdwatching of late, just stolen moments during lunch breaks, or a rare jaunt down to the Tuolumne River. I've been inundated by a combination of work and home projects. So it was that I was digging away in the backyard and stopped for a breather. Because I didn't have my camera, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet practically landed on my head. I went for the camera and the Kinglet was gone, but there were dozens of Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) hopping about in the Mulberry trees. I got a couple of shots in the dying afternoon light.

I always thought "Yellow-rumped" was kind of an insulting name for a bird, and I later found that others thought the same thing. They had better reasons for not liking the name, because it had four distinct subspecies that were clearly different from each other. For years, arguments have raged over whether they were subspecies or distinct and different species altogether. The pendulum is swinging back towards separate species, based on DNA and genetics research. I'm fine with that, since the little rumps would become Audubon's Warblers, a name with much more charisma and gravitas. Although, I have to admit that my first post on the Yellow-rumps had the greatest number of hits of any post on this blog. Since most of my hits come from Google searches, I don't want to speculate why.

Yellow-rumped Warblers in the Backyard

I've seen a lot of interesting birds in the last few months, both with traveling out of state and on local field trips. Sometimes it is easy to forget that there are times when the birds will come to you. I haven't had a lot of chances to sit in the backyard, but the falling leaves are forcing me to do some work out there. While I was doing the requisite yardwork, I remembered how surprised I was to find that there were some cute birds practically under my nose. In particular, a dozen or so Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) spend the off-season in my Mulberry trees. I just don't see them as much until the leaves fall.

Of all the backyard birds, only the Mockingbirds seem less concerned with my presence. There are lots of finches and house sparrows, but they retreat if I come out on the porch. But the warblers don't seem to change their behavior. If anything, judging from the top picture, they are copping a bit of an attitude!

Yellow-rumped Warbler on the Tuolumne River

There are lots of Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) out and about this time of year. Once I started watching birds a bit more carefully, I've seen them in a wide variety of environments across California and Arizona, including my own back yard. The latest sighting came with my strolls along the Tuolumne River where our town is constructing a parkway trail. At this site, the river flows out of the Sierra Nevada foothills onto the floor of the Great Valley.

There are wild Elderberries growing in small thickets along the river channel, and at this time of year the berries are providing some critical nutrition to a variety of bird species. In the space of a few moments I had four different birds land over my head, including Black Phoebe, Phainopepla, the Warbler, and some kind of Thrush or Vireo.

The Yellow-rumped Warbler is a common and widespread species, with a range that extends from Central America to the farthest reaches of Arctic Alaska. They have evolved the ability to digest some of the more waxy berries, which allows them to have the northernmost range of any warbler species.

Their plumage is somewhat muted at this time of year; they get much more colorful during the spring breeding season. They are pretty any time of year, though, which is why they've shown up on this blog more often than most other species.

Yellow-rumped Warblers at Lava Beds National Monument

It was almost surreal watching the parade of different species visiting the water spigots in the campground at Lava Beds National Monument. As has been mentioned before, there are few open sources of water in the park, so the birds congregate at the campground in the mornings. There was some sort of pecking order, as one species would be drinking, they would leave, and then another would appear. We've already seen the Pinyon Jays, the Townsend's Solitaires, the Red Crossbills, and the Robins. In today's post we see the Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata). Their activity that morning highlighted an unfortunate problem at the campground.

I can't find any clear record of whether they like to eat mistletoe berries, but the warblers I saw in the campground certainly seemed to be foraging in the mistletoe clinging to the Juniper trees in the campsite. The mistletoe was the problem.

A bunch of American Conservation Corps (or YCC, I can't remember) workers were planting trees in the campground. When I asked, they pointed out that mistletoe was killing off most of the Junipers that provided shade in the camp, and so they were planting native Ponderosa Pines that will someday replace the dead Junipers.

The mistletoe berries provide a nutritious food source for the birds, but the birds also spread the sticky seeds from tree to tree. I imagine that a balance is usually maintained, but during the drought, the trees may not be able to fight off the parasites. That's my speculation, anyway.  In the meantime, it was delightful following the brightly colored birds throughout the morning in the camp.

Let's Play a Search Game! Not "Where's Waldo?", but "Where's Warbler?"

We were on the north rim of Grand Canyon last week enjoying a spectacular sunset when I noticed rustlings in the underbrush. I snapped a couple of shots, hoping to see what kind of bird it was, and as I went through the pictures later, I noticed that I had indeed captured a few images of a Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata). You would think that a bird with bright yellow spots would be easy to see, but not when the shrubs are just coming into leaf with yellow sprouts!

So here is our brief little game of "Where's Warbler?" There really is a warbler in each of these three photos. In one of them he is looking right at you. How quickly can you find all three?

Luckily, the warblers hopped out of the bushes to forage in the pine duff, so here are some more easily observed Yellow-rumped Warblers at Point Imperial in Grand Canyon National Park.

Yellow-rumped Warblers are one of the more common of the warbler species, and indeed are pretty much the only kind I've seen so far, both at home, on campus, and on the road in both Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks.

The birds have a range that extends from northern Alaska south to Panama. They have more muted colors in the winter; the bright yellow spots are for show during the breeding season.

The warblers eat lots of insects, including some pretty serious forest pests like budworms. In the winter they can switch to berries and other food sources.

All in all, a colorful addition to the landscape when you can actually see them!

Yellow-rumped Warbler in the Yosemite High Country near Bridalveil Creek

The high country of Yosemite National Park is just beginning to come into spring. The snow melted early and the spring will be short, but the woods are starting to come alive with bird songs. We took a short camping trip last week, taking advantage of someone's canceled camp reservations, which gave us time to explore Glacier Point Road. There is a nice little meadow near Bridalveil Creek that is a nice stop to gather in the peace and quiet before braving the crowds at Glacier Point. It's a nice spot for spotting birds.

The most colorful bird we saw in the meadow was a Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata). It was hopping about in the forest duff, and eventually flew into the Lodgepole Pines lining the edge of the meadow. The birds are good at clearing out bugs in the forest, especially some of the beetles that are capable of killing the trees.

The Yellow-rumped Warblers are common birds all across North America, although they are only seen during the migration season in parts of the midwestern states. In their breeding season, they are one of more colorful birds you'll see in the region excepting maybe the Tanagers.

How Yosemite looks without granite cliffs!

Bird of the Day: Yellow-rumped Warblers in a Surprising Place

Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) are one of the most common warbler species found in North America. I've had to work pretty hard to photograph them though, once at Chaw'se, and another time on the west campus. I saw one in the backyard very early one morning catching bugs near the porch light, but I didn't think much of it, since the only birds we've ever seen consistently are the finches and sparrows around the bird feeders.

I was working with the feeders today, setting up a branch for the birds to perch on while they fight for space at the nyjer sock (oh, and making for more natural looking pictures). I finished and sat down in a lawn chair a few yards away to see how the birds liked it (they did). I slowly became aware of movement in the Mulberry trees behind me. I looked over my head and realized there was an entire flock of birds moving about that weren't using the feeders, and not mixing with the finches. It was a bunch of warblers! After searching for the cute little birds in the Sierra Nevada foothills and all over the west campus, they turned out to be hiding in my own backyard.

If you are wondering where the name of the bird comes from, check out the all-too-common bird butt picture that I got this afternoon. You can see just a bit of yellow peeking out between the wings. My shot of one of the West Campus warblers a few months ago shows the yellow patch a bit better.

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...

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.