This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s our sulfur throated spring songster, the Yellow-throated Warbler (Setophaga dominica).
On the threshold of spring, a monochrome spec smears itself across the horizon, melting upon a canvas of pale-gray moss. Then, like day’s break into the chilled sky of morning, a flash of yellow illuminates the gray. A golden glow shines from that spec, while a chorus of birdsong follows from it in kind. Our Yellow-throated Warblers are staking their spring claims.
The Yellow-throated Warbler’s summer range extends across much of South Carolina. They are most abundant on our coast and even live year-round here on the Sea Islands. They are abundant in maritime forests, the fringes of cypress swamps, and the wetland margins and valleys of pineywoods. But, pretty much anywhere on the coast with plentiful hardwood tree cover is suitable habitat for them.
Male and female Yellow-throated Warblers look much the same and are mostly monochrome birds: Black legs, black beak, black eye, black mask, gray back, white belly, and black wings broken by two heavy, white wing-bars. Their face is distinct with a strong white stripe above the eye, a white bag below the eye, and a white crescent behind the cheek that frames a black cheek patch, which blends above into a black eye-stripe and flows below like drops of black ink down its flank. This face serves as a frame for their namesake yellow throat, an explosion of rich sunflower-yellow glowing from chin to chest, sometimes radiating up to the lores in front of their eyes. From this iconic mug emerges a rather long and stout bill for a warbler, with an ever so subtle hook to the tip.
Yellow-throated Warblers are one of the earliest warblers to begin migrating north. They begin singing on Edisto Island near the end of February. Males sing a pleasant, rhythmic song of a dozen notes that fall in pitch while speeding up, before rising back with the last note or two. Pairs build their nest most often here in Spanish Moss, weaving the crook of a tangled beard into a hammock before lining it with straw and webs. I occasionally see them eviscerating the webs of spiders and tentworms for their silk, leaving the terrified web’s keeper thoroughly confused and homeless. Yellow-throated Warblers provision themselves and their young with a diet of insects and arthropods, patrolling tree branches throughout the year for tasty morsels.
