Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Tiny Common Yellowthroat

By: Tom Berg

One of the more distinctive-looking songbirds in the USA is the tiny common yellowthroat.  These beautiful little birds are slightly smaller than a sparrow, and the males are quite colorful.  Male common yellowthroats have olive-colored wings, tail and back.  They have a bright yellow throat and breast, and a jet-black face mask that helps conceal their coal-black eyes.  Just above the black face mask is a bright white line that adds interesting contrast to the top of their head.

Females have a much more bland coloration than the males, which is typical for many bird species.  Female yellowthroats are a brownish olive color all over, except for a pale yellow throat and a slightly yellowish rump beneath the tail.  They also do not have the black face mask or the white stripe above the mask.  Both males and females have very short beaks.

The common yellowthroat is just one of numerous warbler species, and like many warblers it can be found darting around in the trees and tangled vegetation at the edge of woodlands, lakes, wetlands and marshy areas.  They are not only found near woods and water, though.  Dense thickets, fencerows, and overgrown prairie grasses also attract these birds.

Like other warblers, the common yellowthroat is mostly an insect eater.  They eat plenty of small spiders, too.  They flit from branch to branch and stalk to stalk, picking off bugs as they go.  They also forage for insects among the leaf litter on the ground.  Some of their favorite foods are caterpillars, ants, beetles, gnats, flies, moths, bees, grasshoppers and leafhoppers.

Common yellowthroats live and migrate all over North America, from northern Canada all the way south to southern Mexico.  They also spend their winters in Central America and on many islands in the Caribbean. Like many hummingbird species, yellowthroats wintering in Central America fly all the way across the Gulf of Mexico without stopping during their spring migrations.  They are amazing little birds!

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