Tuesday, August 15, 2006

American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)

Finally, I captured a photo of this little warbler!

It has been hanging around our feeder area for a couple of weeks now; flitting about, fanning its tail, giving me just a glance of its beautiful yellow plumage before it disappeared into the foilage again.

When I first saw a Redstart with yellow plumage I had to be convinced that it actually was a Redstart because it had yellow feathers where I expected that they should be red. Previously I had only seen the male adult Redstart which has orange/red and black plumage. However I learned that the female and first summer male Redstarts have yellow and grey colouring. Hopefully I will soon be able to add a picture of the adult male 'red' Redstart that is also flitting about among the trees of our feeder area.

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