The Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) is a brief springtime visitor to the Gorge. It arrives to the bare trees in April with a tiny flurry of brilliant white, blue-black, charcoal and yellow plumage, then vanishes before you know it.
For a few days, in a good year, they drip from the trees. Many return from winter in southern States; others, from thousand-mile migrations via Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America.
Then they move on another few hundred miles, to weave secret cup nests lined with hair or feathers, in conifers somewhere in northern Washington/British Columbia.
They are distinctive: Pom-pom sized, blue-black or gray-brown mites with white wing-bars, white eye-arcs, and some white in the tail, visible in flight. Their backsides shine brilliant gold — the same shade as the balsamroot transforming Dalles Mountain in April.
Here, you can see two different forms of Yellow-rumped Warbler — long considered subspecies.
Audubon’s Warbler (Setophaga coronata audubonii) has a crisp golden throat-patch. It nests in the Northwestern U.S. and British Columbia, and winters in the Southwestern U.S. and points south. It also winters along the Pacific Coast, and — a versatile forager — fly-catches, sometimes visits feeders, even picks insects from washed-up seaweed. Most West Coast migrants are Audubon’s.
But not for long. The American Ornithological Society has committed to finding a new moniker for all bird names that commemorate individual humans, plus other offensive, exclusionary names. Audubon’s Yellow-rumped is a prime candidate, I’d say.
Despite his contributions to ornithology (dubious; he lied about some of his experiments, we know) Audubon was a racist, and an enslaver. I regret his intrusion here, but I’m glad someone in the birding world is, finally, beginning to reckon with part of the ugly legacy he and his contemporaries passed down to us. When I need no longer memorialize such eponyms just to share the wonder of bird taxonomy, I’ll do a celebratory dance.
On to the second subspecies. The more neutrally-named Myrtle Warbler (Setophaga coronata coronata)’s throat is pearl-white, the corners curling up, like an elegant mustache. It inhabits the Eastern U.S., where it got its name from feasting on energy-rich wax myrtle berries, a food no other warbler can digest. It winters along the gulf coast and points south, and breeds from Newfoundland to Alaska. A scarce, regular migrant across North America, it is locally common on our coastline in winter.
The pair were considered different species before 1973, when they were “lumped” into one species named “Yellow-rumped” after scientists caught them interbreeding in a narrow zone in Canada.
Now, genetic studies suggest they are, indeed, different. A “re-splitting” just might be on the horizon, as well as re-naming.
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