Warblers II: A sweetness of Yellow Warblers

My previous two warblers, the Palm Warbler and the Yellow-rumped Warbler, both had partially yellow plumage, so like Malvolio I’ll stick with that hue. Today’s stars are the pedestrianly named Yellow Warblers, who make up for their unimaginative singular moniker by a trio of glorious collective nouns: a sweetness, a stream, or a trepidation. Second in line today, the Common Yellowthroat, also a warbler. They don’t seem to have their own collective noun.

The Yellow Warbler, Setophaga petechia, is widespread in North America, and breeds in Maine. It winters in Mexico and South America. This is a female; I have never seen a male:

You can see why a group of them is called a sweetness.

The Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, also breeds here, and it doesn’t go as far south in the winter. The male is striking, with the eponymous yellow throat, a jet-black mask, and white eyebrows.

For a better look at his plumage, I resort to this sad photo of one that flew into my glass screen door, and never regained consciousness.

In the mid-West, the male is also called the Yellow Bandit, for obvious reasons. The female, as usual, is more sedately garbed:

They were nesting near my pond, where I found these two fledglings, in juvenile plumage:

The one on the right seems to think her brother might feed her, but no such luck.

PS In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Malvolio wears yellow stockings under the false impression that it will delight Olivia, the object of his love. It doesn’t work.