Courage On the Palm
by Debby Pueschel
Title
Courage On the Palm
Artist
Debby Pueschel
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Little Yellow Rumped Warbler waits his turn to drink some sugar water at the hummingbird feeders. It is interesting to see the expressions of these birds who feed in front of my front window. Today, he grasped the tiny leaves of the palm frond...showing how big the plant of the Sago Palm is, and how small he is.
Mark Twain quoted that courage is resistance and mastery of fear - not the absence of fear. How fitting that this little bird hides behind the palm nettles.
Yellow-rumped Warblers eat mainly insects in the summer, including caterpillars and other larvae, leaf beetles, bark beetles, weevils, ants, scale insects, aphids, grasshoppers, caddisflies, craneflies, and gnats, as well as spiders. They also eat spruce budworm, a serious forest pest, during outbreaks. On migration and in winter they eat great numbers of fruits, particularly bayberry and wax myrtle, which their digestive systems are uniquely suited among warblers to digest. The habit is one reason why Yellow-rumped Warblers winter so much farther north than other warbler species. Other commonly eaten fruits include juniper berries, poison ivy, poison oak, greenbrier, grapes, Virginia creeper, and dogwood. They eat wild seeds such as from beach grasses and goldenrod, and they may come to feeders, where they'll take sunflower seeds, raisins, peanut butter, and suet. On their wintering grounds in Mexico they've been seen sipping the sweet honeydew liquid excreted by aphids.
Uploaded
January 30th, 2021
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