Dear Tweeters,

I studied Yellowthroats in WI for my MS and never saw a "feeding dance" or
female without a yellow throat. I suspect Burt was quite close to this
pair's nest, and they were probably agitated while waiting for a chance to
feed the young without being watched. I've seen quite a few species
hesitate to feed with a "predator" near the nest, and sometimes even eat the
food themselves and start alarm calls if delayed for too long. The
yellowthroats I studied were so sensitive to my presence near their nest
that I had to set up a video camera to collect data on feeding rates (which
resulted in some great footage!). I'd like to remind you all to please be
extra sensitive to birds with young this time of year so their growth and
survival are not impeded.

Thanks,

Kara Whittaker
West Seattle


>Message: 15
>Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 07:39:13 -0700
>From: "Guttman,Burt" <GuttmanB at evergreen.edu>
>Subject: [Tweeters] Common Yellowthroats: a feeding dance?
>To: "Tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>Message-ID:
> <FB5E1621DB200144B9B4868129BF0BD4052FB8 at birch.evergreen.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

>My grandson Benny and I walked McLane Creek near Olympia yesterday, where
our most interesting observation was a pair of Common >Yellowthroats. The
female's plumage puzzled me, though. No visible yellow on the breast, but
clear yellow undertail coverts and surprisingly >bright yellow streaks on
the undersides of the tail feathers; none of my references on warblers show
so much yellow in the tails of females. >The male appeared several times
with a bill full of stuff, which at first I took to be fluff for nest lining
from the cattails disintegrating nearby, >but they were surely collections
of insects for feeding nestlings. (Ehrlich's Birder's Handbook says the
female builds the nest but both sexes >feed young.) Then the female
appeared, also with a bill full of insects, and for a while they had a kind
of dancing interaction; under other >circumstances, I might have called it a
mating dance, but since they apparently both had food for nestlings hidden
in the reeds, the >"dance" ! had more of this kind of feeling: "Oh,
Percival, how wonderful that you have such a fine mouthful of food for our
babies." "Oh, >Gwendolyn, I see that you, too, have collected nutritious
food for our little ones. Let us hurry away and feed them!" Please forgive
my >fantasy of a little drama, but I wonder if anyone has ever seen birds
interacting in this way during feeding time. I might have expected >Bent's
Life Histories to mention such behavior, but they don't.

>Burt Guttman
>The Evergreen State College
>Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu <
mailto:guttmanb at evergreen.edu <guttmanb at evergreen.edu>>
>Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503
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