By now, most of my favorite summer time Warblers have left North Carolina and headed south to their winter homes. The Prothonotary Warblers are in Mexico. The Black and White Warblers have settled down in Central and South America. Almost all of the Warblers are somewhere warm and pleasant.
Being relatively new to birding, I was surprised to recently run across a species of Warbler that over-winters here in North Carolina. The Yellow-Rumped Warbler spends it’s summers up north in Coniferous Forests, and migrates down to the south-east US to overwinter. They are also known as the Myrtle Warbler, and birders lovingly call them “Butter-Butts” due to the yellow patch above their tail.
Like most Warblers, these birds feed on a variety of insects. But they also have the unique ability to digest berries from plants that bear fruit in the winter (like Wax Myrtles). This allows them to over-winter in places like North Carolina, while other species of Warblers have to fly south to the Caribbean and South America.
All of these photos were shot in about an hour’s time this week, where dozens and dozens of these little birds congregated in the Maritime Forest along Bogue Sound.