Yellow Warbler

IDENTIFICATION: A bright yellow bird with a green-tinged back. The male has orange breast streaking and sometimes orange flecking on the crown. Length: 12-13 cm.; weight: 9-11 g. Migrant birds from North America weigh the most before migration when they store extra fat.

VOICE: The song is an accelerating series of sweet notes, often with a slurred ending. Audio 2 (M. Oberle).

HABITAT: Mangroves, coastal dry forests, and large shrubs near water, in marshes, and along the coast and lowland rivers.

HABITS: Feeds on insects and spiders by plucking them off leaves or bark, and occasionally hovering. In mangroves, it often forages from the roots above the water and sometimes on nearby mud. In Puerto Rico, beetles, crickets, flies, cicadas, caterpillars, dragonflies, and earwigs have been documented in its diet. It wags its tail up and down, but not as vigorously as the Prairie or Palm Warblers. The female builds a nest of grasses and bark and incubates the 2-3 eggs for 11-12 days. Both sexes feed the young chicks, which fledge 8-12 days after hatching. Migrant birds that breed in North America have larger clutches, typically laying 4-5 eggs.

STATUS AND CONSERVATION: A common, permanent resident. Some Yellow Warblers that breed in North America winter in Puerto Rico. The Yellow Warbler is a common host in Puerto Rico of the Shiny Cowbird, a nest parasite, which may have a long-term impact on breeding success.

RANGE: Breeds from northern Alaska and Quebec south to northwestern Venezuela. A typical location to find this species is in mangroves, such as at Boquerón State Forest.

TAXONOMY: PASSERIFORMES; PARULIDAE. Dozens of subspecies of Yellow Warbler have been proposed, but more recently some taxonomists have lumped them into three subspecies complexes: the aestiva group of Yellow Warblers that nest in North America, the Golden Warbler (petechia group) of the Caribbean which tends to be darker and greener, and the Mangrove Warbler (erithachorides group) of Central America that often has a chestnut head. Some taxonomists have proposed splitting the Caribbean subspecies into a separate species.

Photo: A. Sßnchez Mu±oz

Photo: A. Sßnchez Mu±oz


Photo: B. Hallett

References

Arendt, W.J. 1992. Status of North American migrant landbirds in the Caribbean region: a summary. Pp. 143-171 in Ecology and conservation of neotropical migrant landbirds (J.M. Hagan III and D.W. Johnston, eds.) Smithsonian Instit. Press, Washington, D.C.

Bent, A.C. 1953. Life histories of North American wood warblers. Smithsonian Instit. U.S. National Museum Bull. 203. (Reprinted by Dover Press, NY, 1963).

Debenedictis, P.A. 1997. Yellow warblers, outside in. Birding 29(4):328-331.

Dunn, J. and K. Garrett. 1997. A field guide to warblers of North America. Houghton Mifflin, NY.

Ehrlich, P.R., D.S. Dobkin, and D. Wheye. 1988. The birderÆs handbook: a field guide to the natural history of North American birds. Simon and Schuster/ Fireside, NY.

Lowther, P. E., C. Celada, N. K. Klein, C. C. Rimmer, and D. A. Spector. 1999. Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia). in The birds of North America, No. 454 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

Neudorf, D. L. & S. A. Tarof. 1998. The role of chip calls in winter territoriality of Yellow Warblers. J. Field Ornithology 69:30-36.

Raffaele, H.A. 1989. A guide to the birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Princeton.

Raffaele, H.A. 1989. Una guía a las aves de Puerto Rico y las Islas Vírgenes. Publishing Resources, Inc., Santurce, PR.

Raffaele, H.A., J.W. Wiley, O.H. Garrido, A.R. Keith, and J.I. Raffaele. 1998. Guide to the birds of the West Indies. Princeton.

Saliva, J.E. 1994. Vieques y su fauna: Vieques wildlife manual. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Boquerón, PR.

Wiley, J.W. 1986. Growth of Shiny Cowbird and host chicks. Wilson Bull. 98:126-131.

Yellow Warbler, Spanish text

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Photo: G. Beaton


Photo: G. Beaton


Photo: M. Oberle


Photo: M. Oberle