Now that I have given myself some breathing room with the previous non-bird post, I can check a few more off my NA Birding Life List (yeah).  Today’s featured bird is the Yellow Warbler.

My title needed to be wrapped by the sarcasm tags since we once again have have zero originality in our bird discoverers.  “Hey look, a YELLOW bird!”  This particular specimen was taken on our stop at Lake Andes in South Dakota.  Yes, that is the same location that has been producing new birds for my list in a number of recent posts.  Still not at Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve in Nevada levels, but surely worth the jaunt over while on our way to Yellowstone National Park.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this yella fella.

One thing that was quite intriguing about this particular bird was the different shapes it produced across the various shots.  The first shot is the more standard birding reference shape.  The basically full body yellow coloring followed by the well defined dark brown stripes on the chest were the key identification features.  At times it would display an elongated body profile as in the shape above and other times it would settle into a fairly compact almost Sparrow like shape below.  That, of course, assumes the shot below is of the same bird – everything seems to match colorwise and the beak/eye all line up.

Here’s another shot from the front so you can see the bold streaking on the breast.

I do not know much about this particular bird and admittedly, initially thought it was in the Goldfinch family until the larger body brought the appropriate skepticism.  Let’s see what Cornell has to say about this brightly colored specimen.  This seems to be a male based on their description.  Only the males sport the dark streaking on the breast which this one clearly has.  They have a high whistled song which is the primary reason I was able to track it down being a bird that prefers to hang out in the tops of trees – tough to spot them, in spite of their color, when buried in the tops of the tree canopy.  They are often parasitized by those damn Cowbird’s.  Unlike most birds, this intrusion is recognized by the Warbler where upon they build a new nest directly on top of the rudely invaded one – take that you bastard Cowbird.  The Yellow Warbler primarily has a diet consisting of insects including wasps.  Best of all – they carry a Least Concern conservation status – awesome.

That’s all I have folks.  Pretty excited about adding another check to my birding list.  A piddly little thing compared to the numbers my brother Ron is racking up as of late, but every little bit helps.  Have a good one everyone – time for me to work a bit on Project Auuuuunnnoooold while the Cards are putting some hurt on the Brewers (making up for an embarrassing loss to them on our home opener)