Rise of the Butterbutts

Yellow-rumped Warbler - male
Dendroica coronata

I was getting ready to mow the lawn when I heard a call that I knew wasn't normal for my yard. I quickly figured out it was a pine warbler, but then heard another call that I recognized but couldn't ID. A quick listen to some songs revealed it to be a prairie warbler. I went out with binoculars and found both birds - and dozens more. Out came the camera. I spent the next 30 minutes taking (bad) pictures of a number of rarities for our yard (* never seen in our yard before):

6 ruby-crowned kinglets, 12+ yellow-rumped warbler, 1 black-and-white warbler, 1 pine warbler*, 2-3 prairie warbler*, 3-4 northern parula*

Needless to say, the lawn was ... postponed a bit. And it turned out that the tough light made it hard to get many decent shots of birds who were almost always 15-20' in the trees, backlit, amidst the branches and moving quickly. But I did manage this one of a butterbutt.

I don't know that I've every noticed quite how attractive a warbler they are in breeding plumage - they've always been (in my mind at least) one of the more drab species. But the collection of browns and yellows and that mask to make for an attractive set of markings.