Yellow-rumped Warbler is Ohio's only regular wintering warbler

 

A female yellow-rumped warbler feasts on poison ivy berries/Jim McCormac

NATURE

Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

January 19, 2026

Come mid-winter, birders start to experience warbler-deficit disorder. The small, colorful songbirds are favorites among the binocular-toting crowd, and Ohio is a major warbler hotspot.

Forty-one warbler species have occurred in the Buckeye State, and 36 of them occur annually. Many species occur in large numbers, especially during spring and fall migration.

But May – peak of vernal migration – is still months away. That’s a long time for those of thirsting for colorful Blackburnian, Cape May and Magnolia warblers and their dashing brethren. Collectively, our warblers display a palette of hues that would dazzle the most ambitious artist.

However, most of our warblers are currently residing in haunts that should make most of us northerners envious: southern Florida, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico. Most species of warblers winter in tropical climes with some species as far south as Argentina and Bolivia.

Take hope, though – we still have the hardy yellow-rumped warbler! This feathered tough bucks the dominant paradigm of its southbound snowbird associates and routinely winters in northerly latitudes such as Ohio.

The yellow-rumped warbler is the most abundant North American warbler with a population estimated at 150 million birds. “Butterbutts,” as they are slangily known, are among our showiest warblers, but people get jaded to them due to their commonness. “Just another butterbutt” is an oft-heard refrain amongst birders poring through the waves of spring and fall migrants.

No yellow-rumped warblers occupy Ohio during the summer months. Their breeding season lies well to our north, where they nest across the length and breadth of the conifer-dominated boreal forest.

Breeding butterbutts can be found from Alaska to Newfoundland, and south to northernmost Michigan. Others breed further south at high elevations in the Appalachian Mountains and the western Rocky Mountains.

While both sexes sport the telltale yellow rump, the male is admittedly flashier. It is clad in showy black and grayish-blue plumage highlighted by a golden throat and flanks. At one time, scientists cleaved this widespread warbler into two species: the eastern “myrtle” warbler and the western “Audubon’s” warbler.

Males of the latter, named for the legendary frontiersman and ornithologist John James Audubon, wear a lemony-colored crown patch and flashy yellow throat. The myrtle warbler – which birds appearing in Ohio are – lack the golden crown and have white throats.

Due to a zone of hybridization, where myrtle and Audubon’s warbler ranges meet, scientists lumped them into one species – the yellow-rumped warbler – in 1973. To this day, many birders still refer to these subspecies as myrtle and Audubon’s warblers.

Breeding yellow-rumped warblers are tightly tied to coniferous trees, including fir, pine and spruce. Away from that habitat, however, they are perhaps the most versatile of all our warblers in habitat use.

I would not be surprised to see a butterbutt in nearly any habitat imaginable and probably have over the years. The warblers are also adept at finding and eating a wide range of food, which, in addition to their vast breeding range, probably plays a big role in their success.

This hardy, versatile warbler also winters further north than any other warbler. While some birds range as far south as the Caribbean and Central America, most winter in the U.S.

I’m in southeastern Texas as I write this column, and yellow-rumped warblers are everywhere. But just a week ago, Shauna and I participated in the Hocking Hills Christmas Bird Count in Ohio and found seven butterbutts in our turf. Yellow-rumped warblers winter commonly north to Ohio and other Midwestern states.

A prime reason that butterbutts can survive northern winters is their ability to include lots of fruit into their diet. And a major source of that fruit is one of the most despised native plants in North America: poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans).

I suspect that poison ivy is THE primary reason that butterbutts can successfully overwinter in northern climes, while their mostly insect-eating warbler relatives must retreat to more southerly buggy latitudes.

The yellow-rumped warbler in the accompanying photo is scarfing down poison ivy berries, and I made that image on the aforementioned Hocking Hills bird count in subfreezing temperatures.

Poison ivy fruit fuels many species of wintering birds, not just butterbutts. In many ways, the rash-inducing vine is one of our most important wildlife plants. That’s a hard case to make to most people, but the yellow-rumped warblers sure appreciate poison ivy.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.