Turns out there were at least two Yellow Warblers that visited my yard during the spring migration—one mature male and one immature male.
The immature jumped around in our backyard catching bugs, but the mature bird hung out in my serviceberry shrub for 2 days and drove me nuts as I tried to capture him in a photo. The first day he landed on one of the birdbaths with a goldfinch and that’s when I had a moment of success.
Our serviceberry is usually done blooming by the time the migrating birds arrive, but because our spring was so wet and chilly, it happened to be in peak bloom this year. The flowers attract lots of insects which attracted my new little friend.
Yellow Warblers are smaller than American Goldfinches, and unlike most of the other warblers that like to hang out high in the tree tops, it doesn’t seem to mind searching for insects closer to the ground so you don’t need to crane your neck to see them.
Here’s a fun fact about Yellow Warblers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website: “Life can be dangerous for a small bird. Yellow Warblers have occasionally been found caught in the strands of an orb weaver spider’s web.”