Yellow-rumped Warbler

Description:

Non breeding plumage. Probably the Myrtle warbler due to the white chin.

Habitat:

Spotted in one of the low lying pine trees at Grayland Beach State Park.

Notes:

Audubon's and the myrtle are among North America's most abundant neotropical migrants. They are primarily insectivorous. The species is perhaps the most versatile foragers of all warblers. Beyond gleaning from leaves like other New World warblers, they often flit, flycatcher-like, out from their perches in short loops, to catch flying insects. Other places yellow-rumped warblers have been spotted foraging include picking at insects on washed-up seaweed at the beach, skimming insects from the surface of rivers and the ocean, picking them out of spiderwebs, and grabbing them off piles of manure. Common foods include caterpillars and other larvae, leaf beetles, bark beetles, weevils, ants, scale insects, aphids, grasshoppers, caddisflies, craneflies, and gnats, as well as spiders. They also eat spruce budworm, a serious forest pest, during outbreaks. When bugs are scarce, the myrtle warbler also eats fruit, including the wax-myrtle berries which gave it its name. It is the only warbler able to digest such waxy material. The ability to use these fruits allows it to winter farther north than other warblers, sometimes as far north as Newfoundland. Other commonly eaten fruits include juniper berries, poison ivy, poison oak, greenbrier, grapes, Virginia creeper and dogwood. They eat wild seeds such as from beach grasses and goldenrod, and they may come to feeders, where they'll take sunflower seeds, raisins, peanut butter, and suet. On their wintering grounds in Mexico they've been seen sipping the sweet honeydew liquid excreted by aphids. Male yellow-rumped warblers tend to forage higher in the trees than females do. While foraging with other warbler species, they sometimes aggressively displace other species, including pine warblers and Blackburnian warblers.