I cannot take credit for that term or its use in this case.
The South Idaho Bird Alert is recorded by Dr. Charles Trost, a
professor at Idaho State University (Pocatello, Idaho). The tape is
transcribed by Diane Gettinger, who send the transcript to BirdWest (a
listserver that sends out rare bird reports for the western U.S. to its
subscribers). I receive the transcript from BirdWest, then I clean it up
with my word processor and send it to Tweeters and Oregon Birders Online
(OBOL). The clean-up using the word processor was requested by several
subscribers to Obol and Tweeters to avoid those annoying forwarding markers
(see below).
I learned much of my birding knowledge and much of my ornithology
from Chuck Trost. He is quite a character; his favorite bird is the
Black-billed Magpie! He studies their behavior and has some great stories
about them. He also has some great names for birds, including butterbutt
for Yellow-rumped Warblers.
My only problem with using butterbutt for the Yellow-rump is that I
have always used it to refer to Green-winged Teals (the males have yellow
patches on their rumps. Actually, I use it for both species. Luckily, I
rarely see them in the same place!

Cheers
Deb


>Hi Deb,
>
>thanks for your warbler list - it was the first time that I heard the
>name. Why would anybody want to keep Yellow-rumped Warbler, when
>Butterbutt is so much more to the point?
>Reminds me of the Long-winded...eh...-tailed Duck.
>
>Reto Riesen
>Dept. Chem., UBC
>Vancouver, B.C.
>riesenr at chem.ubc.ca
>
>
Deborah K. Beutler
Department of Zoology
Washington State Univeristy
Pullman, WA

dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu