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Order: Passeriformes Family: Parulidae Chick Type: Altricial Yellow Warblers breed from Canada to the northern 2/3rds of the United States. Yellow Warblers migrate each year to wintering grounds in the northern parts of South America & the West Indies. Cup nests are built on trees and scrubs; these nests could be as low as 3 feet high. Clutch sizes around 3 to 5 are typical. Eggs are incubated for around 11 days and the chicks will fledge after 10 days. Parents will continue to care for the young for up to two weeks after fledging. Diet consists of a broad range of insects and spiders, especially moths and caterpillars. Breeding habitat consists of woodlands, marshlands with willows. Yellow Warblers have adapted well to suburban landscape, they will breed in city parks and orchards. This warbler species consists of around 43 different subspecies; they are grouped under Golden, Mangrove and Yellow Warblers. Only the Yellow Warbler group migrates to breeding grounds in the United States. The other two are local seasonal migrants of Central & South America. There are 9 subspecies found north of Mexico. Most of the pictures on this page are of the Dendroica petechia aestiva subspecies. There have been some detailed studies on brood parasitism between Brown-headed Cowbirds and Yellow Warblers. In some locations, half of all Yellow Warbler nests are parasitized by cowbirds. Some actions that warblers take to defend against this are: clutch abandonment and building a new nest on top of the old nest. In some situations, the pair adopts the egg mainly because of the short breeding season in northern parts of its breeding range. |
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