![]() ![]() They are different than other warblers in that they can withstand the colder weather of winter and can be spotted in our state year-round. Yellow-rumped Warblers are one of the most common species of warblers that can be seen in Indiana. These cheerful warblers are about the size of a Chickadee and are fairly large for a Warbler. During Spring mating season, both sexes are vibrant colors of gray, black, and white with bits of yellow on their sides, face and rump, but during the winter these colors fade to a paler brown with just a bit of yellow on their sides along with the yellow rump. Year-round, Yellow-rumped Warblers have a distinguishable patch of yellow on the top of their rump which is where they get the name butterbutt. It didn’t take long for me to learn that the birds I had seen that day were Yellow-rumped Warblers ( Setophaga coronate) or butterbutts as they are affectionally known in the birding world. “Butterbutts? What were butterbutts?” I wondered to myself. “Just a bunch of butterbutts!” she sighed and walked on down the path towards her car. A fellow birder passed me on the path and asked what I was watching, and I excitedly exclaimed “a flock of warblers!’ I had heard of these amazing little birds – but never spotted one with my own eyes – and here was a whole flock of them! The other birder put her camera up to her eye and zoomed in to have a look. I watched joyfully through my binoculars as they flitted among the branches chasing insects. As I walked down the path through the trees towards the viewing platform, a flock of birds caught my eyes in the treetops above. “Just a bunch of butterbutts!” When I first began birding several years ago, I took a trip up to Jasper Pulaski to see the Sandhill Cranes in the fall. Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) by April Raver
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