#2948 "Yellow Warbler Friend"

#2948 "Yellow Warbler Friend" 
16 X 20 inches by 3/4 profile in depth.
Started 9:00 am Friday May 23rd, 2025

John Verburg wrote that the "pretty Male Yellow Warbler was fun and relatively easy to photograph!". The photo presented some artistic challenges, but that is another story. Yellow Warblers are very entertaining and deserve our attention. 

Singing males perch near the tops of the bushes or trees in their territory. As male Yellow Warblers are setting up territories, they may perform a "circle flight" in which they fly toward a neighbouring male or female in a horizontal, semicircular path. A male may also fly slowly with fast, exaggerated wingbeats away from a female he is courting or a male he is competing with. As these territorial encounters proceed, males start by singing at each other; as the dispute goes on, the songs get quieter or switch to chip notes as the males chase each other. Yellow Warblers typically form monogamous pairs that sometimes last more than one breeding season and reform the next. 

Yellow Warblers forage along slender branches of shrubs and small trees. They pick off insect prey as they go or may briefly hover to get at prey on leaves. Typical prey include midges, caterpillars, beetles, leafhoppers and other bugs, and wasps. 

The females need about four days of construction to build the nest. She starts with a cup of grasses, bark strips, and plants such as nettles. She then lines the outside with plant fibres, spiderwebs, and plants. The inner cup is finished with deer hair, feathers, and fibres from cottonwood, dandelion, willow, and cattail seeds. If a cowbird lays its eggs in a Yellow Warbler's nest, it often begins building a new nest directly on top of the old one, abandoning both its own eggs and the cowbird's. 

Yellow Warblers vigorously defend their nesting territories. They may even chase off other warbler species while on their wintering grounds. Common predators of Yellow Warbler nests include garter snakes, red squirrels, jays, crows, raccoons, weasels, skunks, and domestic or feral cats. 

Yellow Warblers are long-distance migrants from South America as far as Alaska. Yellow Warblers breed across central and northern North America while spending their winters in Central America and northern South America. They migrate earlier than most other warblers in both spring and fall. Like many other migrating songbirds, Yellow Warblers from eastern North America fly across the Gulf of Mexico in a single nonstop journey. Some Yellow Warblers will take a longer southbound overland route around the Gulf in autumn.  

Yellow Warblers are one of the most numerous warblers in North America, but their populations have been slowly declining by an estimated 0.4% per year for a cumulative decline of about 20% between 1966 and 2019. Like many migratory songbirds that move at night, Yellow Warblers can be attracted to and killed by collisions with tall, lighted structures such as TV towers and tall buildings.  

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick