One of the most common warblers anywhere in North America is the Yellow-rumped Warbler. When we lived down in California the “butter-butt” was one of the species that you expected to see all winter and even, in some pockets, year round.  Here on Vancouver Island it is a summer bird that will show up migrating in the spring and fall and in numbers that make it a common sight, perhaps the most common warbler seen in North America.

Many birders probably will not pay much attention to this common bird.  Look at the rump — if yellow checkmark beside Yellow-rumped.  Want more detail? Look at the throat.  If it’s yellow it’s an Audubon’s with normal western range from the Pacific to the Rockies and north to Haida Gwai.  If the throat is white, it’s a Myrtle with range just about anywhere in North America.  Oh, Audubon’s and Myrtle are sub-species.

Here are some adult Yellow-rump pictures taken in Nanaimo recently (July 3, 2019).

First, a side view.  Note the yellow markings on the throat, top of head and shoulder.

Next,  a view more from the front.

The throat marking is yellow for the Audubon’s sub-species seen on the west coast. On the east coast the Myrtle is more common with its white throat patch.

Of course I had to have at least one picture from behind of the yellow butt, er rump.

In Disguise

At this time of year, early summer, the new batch of birds are hatching, fledging and showing up with all the other birds making bird identification trickier.  These new birds would be unrecognizable to anyone who has only ever paid attention to adult birds.  For instance, look at the following picture taken on July 11 2019:

It doesn’t look much like a Yellow-rumped but it turns out that this is in fact a juvenile Yellow-rumped Warbler (thanks to those who helped me with the ID).  There is no evidence of the yellow patches seen in an adult.

Juvenile Yellow-rumped Exposed

Look at the next sequence of 4 images, all of a single juvenile Yellow-rumped, taken over a period of a few seconds on July 14, 2019.  How do I know this is a “butter-butt”? Look at the second picture taken a few seconds after the first.

Nothing? Don’t see it?  Look at the third picture taken a few seconds after the second:

The bird has adjusted its feathers to show the yellow-rump.  Finally, a few seconds later still:

The bird’s identify has been fully exposed despite the lack of any of the other yellow patches.

Nature rarely does anything without a reason which makes me wonder what purpose the yellow-butt and the ability to expose it play in the day-to-day of this warbler.  At least it makes identifying the juvenile birds without any other yellow markings a little easier.

Final Thoughts

The Audubon’s and Myrtle sub-species were separate species until 1973 when scientists combined them.  Better DNA evidence suggests that perhaps they should be separate species after all.  Check out the following 2016 article by Hugh Powell in All About Birds, an online free resource from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Goodbye, Yellow-Rump: Will We See A Return To Myrtle And Audubon’s Warblers?

I found this in my archive from last year.  It looks like it may be drying its wings or…

… conducting the ‘Ode to Joy’ !?

Updated July 12, 2019: Added a ‘See Also’ section.

Empidonax: from the Ancient Greek empis for “gnat“, and anax for “master”.

Empidonax Flycatchers

Anyone who regularly watches birds in North America will, at some point, come across  a small flycatcher from the genus Empidonax for which species identification may have proven to be difficult or impossible.  In many cases the only reliable identification requires hearing the bird’s song which is only sung by the adult male and usually only during breeding season.

But wait, there’s Contopus.

There is a second genus of flycatcher, Contopus, (pewees and wood-pewees) that should be considered as some of its species can resemble those of Empidonax. On Vancouver Island the relevant Contopus species are the Olive-sided Flycatcher and the Western Wood-Pewee.

My Identification Challenge

Our house backs onto a small pond and wetland decorated with fairly heavy brush that provides good cover for birds and other critters.  The brushy area behind our yard is where I recently encountered the flycatcher shown in the following pictures:

These images were all taken with my Panasonic FZ-200 camera and have not been edited other than to crop the images. No song or call was heard from the flycatcher.

None of the Contopus flycatchers appear to be a match leaving us with Empidonax.  Based on the Sibley Guide to Birds (2000 edition) the only Empidonax species that we should see in the Nanaimo area are Pacific-slope, Willow and Hammond’s. The Least, Dusky and Gray Flycatchers have normal habitats that come close to Vancouver Island and should not immediately be discounted when comparing species based on appearance.

Help!

I am not comfortable assigning my flycatcher pictures to any of the above mentioned Empidonax species to I will solicit birders out there to propose a species type for the above images hopefully with an explanation for their identification.

See Also

Here are some resources for flycatcher identification.  I will update this post if I find additional interesting links.

Identifying Flycatchers on their Wintering Grounds

If you think that identifying the Empidonax and Contopus flycatchers is difficult up here in Canada and the US during breading season, consider what it must be like in April and May in South America where migratory species from the East and West coasts of North America are intermixed with non-migratory resident species.  To make matters worse they various species may be silent, not singing those songs that are sometimes the best way to separate and identify flycatchers.  Here is a link to a document provided by eBird Central America that will give you a summary of the ID challenges and provide you with tips on how to separate: Flycatcher ID challenges in a Central American context.

Our back deck overlooks one end of a wetlands that eBird identifies by the hotspot Oliver Woods Community Centre Pond. This location, which has only been identified as a hotspot since February 2019, has more than 50 species associated with it.  I have seen most of these from the comfort of our back deck.

In the last few days Cedar Waxwings have caught my attention. There appears to be a resident population of ten or twenty Waxwings that hand out around our end of the pond.  I usually think of this bird as hanging around in flocks looking for berries to gorge themselves on, particularly in the winter months.   I would normally expect them to be somewhere else right now.  According to the All About Birds information for the Cedar Waxwing, however, this region has year-round populations. of Cedar Waxwings.

In the last few days I’ve seen two interesting Waxwing behaviours.

First, a number of the birds regularly spend time on top of the large lily pads that cover much of the pond. They appear to be foraging for insects.  The following picture shows an example:

I noticed the second interesting behaviour at dusk.  Here is a picture of the pond just before sunset.The glowing areas are some bushes catching the last daylight.  The glow is also attracting lots of flying insects.  The Cedar Waxwings were attracted to these insects and were making short excursions from nearby perches to fly-catch.

Here are a some images of perched Waxwings between foraging flights:

I will have to try making short videos of the fly-catching flights.

I did a little more research into Cedar Waxwing behaviour.  From the Food section of the All About Birds website Life History for the Cedar Waxwing I found the following:

Cedar Waxwings feed mainly on fruits year-round. In summer, they feed on fruits such as serviceberry, strawberry, mulberry, dogwood, and raspberries. The birds’ name derives from their appetite for cedar berries in winter; they also eat mistletoe, madrone, juniper, mountain ash, honeysuckle, crabapple, hawthorn, and Russian olive fruits. In summer Cedar Waxwings supplement their fruit diet with protein-rich insects including mayflies, dragonflies, and stoneflies, often caught on the wing. They also pick items such as scale insects, spruce budworm, and leaf beetles directly from vegetation.

I also checked Birds of North America Online (requires a subscription) and found the following text:

One of only three species worldwide in the family Bombycillidae, the Cedar Waxwing is named for the red, waxlike tips on the secondary flight-feathers of adult birds. Sugary fruits dominate the diet of this bird, especially in winter. During warmer months, Cedar Waxwings glean insects from vegetation or snatch them from the air in sallies from exposed perches, often near streams or ponds. This is a true frugivore, assimilating nutrients from fruit pulp and passing seeds intact back to the environment.

Apparently this is all normal behaviour.  Huh!

See Also:

All About Birds Cedar Waxwing Gallery

June 26: This was the day that we noticed the nest being built on top of the light in our front entry way. Our first thought was a swallow because we have a lot of them flying around our neighbourhood though most would have nested weeks earlier.

June 28: We noticed a bird sitting on the nest so I got out my camera and we discovered a Pacific-slope Flycatcher (whose 4-letter species ID is PSFL) sitting on the nest. Here is the picture that I took:

Consulting with Birds of North America Online (BNA-online) I discovered that first broods occur in April or May but some pairs will attempt a second nest around June or July. This was clearly round 2 for these birds.

June 30: I got up on a step-stool, held my iPhone 4s above the nest and took a picture:

The PSFL was sitting on 3 eggs. Consulting BNA-online again I found out that the most common number of eggs is 4 followed by 3 so we might have a full nest or there may be more to come.

July 2: Only 2 days after the first picture, I took a second and discovered that there were still 3 eggs.

July 5: Another 3 days and there were still only 3 eggs to the bird sitting on the nest was probably incubating the eggs. BNA-online indicated typical incubation periods of 13 to 16 days so, assuming that my first ‘egg picture’ indicated the start of incubation then we should expect the eggs to hatch between July 12 and 15.

July 11: A picture from my iPhone shows that the eggs have hatched:

The three ‘grubs’ in the nest look pretty helpless so they must have hatched quite recently.  I decided to call July 11 hatch-day 0.

Here is my first video of the adults coming and going, bringing food to the nestlings.

There will be many more videos and pictures to come as the nestlings grow up and fledge. I just hope that they all make it to fly away risking the odds of survival which are not in their favour — I’ve heard that only about one in ten birds survive a year after hatching.

I was birding Buttertub Marsh with a friend last Thursday (November 17, 2016). We were scanning the almost empty pond for waterfowl when Leonel noticed 4 Great Fronted Geese hanging out with some Canada Geese at the far side of the pond. It was the first time that I had seen them there.

Here’s a picture captured with my Panasonic FZ-200 at maximum zoom. It’s cropped as well. You can also see a bird in front just to the right of centre with a neck-band as well. I’ll say more on this guy later.

Four Greater White-fronted geese mixed with some Canada Geese at Buttertub Marsh on November 17, 2016.

About and hour and a half later we were just about done and noticed the Canada Geese swimming more in the middle of the pond without the GWFG. It was Leonel’s good eyes and my FZ-200 to the rescue a second time. The 4 geese were across the pond on the edge of the pond resting, their coloration blending in well with the background reeds.

VIU Canada Goose Project

I said that I’d come back to that Canada Goose with a neck band in the first picture.

A group from VIU, headed by student Stew Pearce, banded 200 Canada Geese earlier this year and has been following the locations where they have been seen since using information sent in by birders or anyone else interested in helping out. The goal is to learn how the birds move about during the year. You can find out more by going to the VIU Canada Goose Project web-site.

Stew told me recently that geese from the project have been seen and reported from as far away as Portland, Oregon. So, if you happen to see a Canada Goose with a neck band let Stew know using the instructions at the above link.

So, did I figure out what the ID of our find was? Yup! We saw the bird swimming behind some reeds an hour or so after our first encounter and I took a some pictures as the goose swam in and out of view. One of the four was clear enough to ID the goose:

Our goose’s ID was “096P”. I checked the web-site and discovered that the most recent sighting was November 6 at Buttertubs Marsh. I’m guessing that this guy is not going South this winter.