Common Yellowthroat – Bird Art Print on Wood

This listing is for a limited edition, fine art print of my original painting of a Common Yellowthroat titled, “Gold Lion’s Gonna Tell Me Where the Light Is.”

I met this cute little bird while it was hopping around a marsh in San Rafael. It was busy looking for snacks among the reeds. Seeing this little ball of sunshine out in the world was a real treat!

About the Common Yellowthroat

from AllAboutBirds.org:

A broad black mask lends a touch of highwayman’s mystique to the male Common Yellowthroat. Look for these furtive, yellow-and-olive warblers skulking through tangled vegetation, often at the edges of marshes and wetlands. Females lack the mask and are much browner, though they usually show a hint of warm yellow at the throat. Yellowthroats are vocal birds, and both their witchety-witchety-witchety songs and distinctive call notes help reveal the presence of this, one of our most numerous warblers.

The Common Yellowthroat was one of the first bird species to be catalogued from the New World, when a specimen from Maryland was described by Linnaeus in 1766.

Each male normally has only one mate in his territory during a breeding season. However, a female’s mating calls often attract other males, and she may mate with them behind her mate’s back.

Brown-headed Cowbirds often lay their eggs in the nests of Common Yellowthroats (and many other songbird species). This is called brood parasitism, and it’s detrimental to the yellowthroats, so they’ve developed a few defenses. They desert a nest if it contains a cowbird egg, or if their own eggs have been removed or damaged by a visiting cowbird. They may build a second or even a third nest on top of a parasitized nest.

Range Map of the Common Yellowthroat