Hi Tweets,

I think it really depends on what type of habitat and
forage is available for these birds in a given area.
On the Edmonds CBC, our group had 30 Yellow-rumps,
whereas we only had one orange-crowned, and I don't
know if anyone in the count circle had Townsend's. I,
personally, know that there is a Townsend's wintering
at Shoreview Park and one at Forsgren Park in Bothell.
Both these areas have lots of chickadees and mixed
conifers with decidious. I think that in areas with
lots of open brush (like in Southwest Washington) you
are more likely to find concentrations of
Yellow-rumps. The other thing to keep in mind, is
that Yellow-rumps tend to be found more often in
groups, whereas Townsend's and Orange-crowned warblers
are both often found as individuals in a flock of
Chickadees and kinglets. So where there may be
several individual Townsend's in an area (not all of
them are likely to be seen) there may be only a few
large groups of Yellow-rumps.

Michael Dossett
Bothell
Phainopepla at yahoo.com


--- WAYNE WEBER <WAYNE_WEBER at bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Tweeters,
>
> The winter abundance of Townsend's and
> Yellow-rumped Warblers is
> intriguing, because it varies in different parts of
> western Washington
> and southwestern B.C. As Eric Kraig notes,
> Yellow-rumped Warblers
> winter in large numbers around Ocean Shores and
> elsewhere along the
> southwest Washington coast, where their main food is
> probably the
> fruit of the wax-myrtle or California bayberry-- in
> the same way that
> a related species is the main winter food of the
> "Myrtle" warbler on
> the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Away from the
> immediate coast,
> Yellow-rumps are generally uncommon to rare in
> winter, but I would
> have said they were more frequent than Townsend's in
> most areas.
> Snip>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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