A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Yellow Wagtail:Yellow Wagtail Ikigcaqaq Here’s a mouthful for you: Motacilla tschutschensis. That’s the new scientific name for this bird, and it’s almost as long as the bird itself. It means, “the bird that bobs its tail up and down.” None of the Yup’ik names I‘ve found are that long, and the one I was given from Scammon Bay, Ikigcaqaq, I think better describes this wagtail than the scientific or English common names do. Ikigcaqaq translates as, “the bird that bends over, sticking his butt in the air.” Watch it sometime and you’ll see what I mean. What some authors describe as simultaneous head nodding and tail bobbing is what I liken to the “dude strut,” a form of walking you find especially among “cool dudes” in the inner city. Whether it’s in willow thickets of the Lower Yukon Delta or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (where I’ve seen most of these birds), the Yellow wagtail is a songbird that’s hard to miss. The bright yellow coloring of the male, its nodding head and bobbing tail with flashing white outer feathers, its loud sharp ple, ple, ple, ple song while flying or perched on top of tall willows, its pursuit of insects in midair, and the way a nesting pair (joined by other males) will aggressively mob an intruding predator (or bird watcher), are only some of its remarkable behaviors. Another is its aerial courtship flight. As soon as the birds reach their nesting territory the male begins courting the female. He flies up in the air about 60-90 feet, then floats back to earth on stiff down-turned wings, singing and slowly spreading and elevating his tail. Close to the ground, he glides over to a bush or high rock, sings, then repeats the ritual. The female is watching his display somewhere nearby on the ground or in the air. Sometimes the male may land near his paramour on the ground and crouch low with drooped wings and tail, body feathers all fluffed up, then run around her like a madman. He may also hover over her with his tail feathers spread wide. It’s an amazing spectacle, and soon accomplishes its purpose, and the pair seriously settles into a nesting mode. The female alone builds the nest on the ground in a well-hidden spot at the grassy base of a shrub, or at the edge of a tundra tussock. She carefully constructs it in the shape of a cup, using leaves, moss, lichens and grass, then lines it with feathers and animal hair. She lays as many as six buffy-gray eggs dotted with brown. Both parents help incubate the eggs, although the female carries more of the load, and after the eggs hatch in 11-13 days, both parents also feed the nestlings until they’re ready to depart the crowded nest about 13 days later. Since the young are not able to fly for another 3-6 days after they leave, the parents keep close eye on them and brood them during the cool hours of the Arctic twilight. During this period the young learn to hunt insects, small worms, snails, seeds and berries on the ground or along the edge of shallow water. Later they will become adept at hunting insects by hovering near foliage or chasing them in midair. As with other Arctic nesting species, they have only a short window of opportunity to fatten up for their long migration, which will take them all the way to Australia and parts of south Asia. There are several other Asian species of Yellow wagtail, but only the Eastern Yellow wagtail (tschutschensis) nests in Alaska. Even the Alaskan species originated in Asia, and only recently did it separate from its cousins and begin to nest in Alaska. It began doing this in the Bering Land Bridge area about 18,000 thousand years ago during the Pleistocene glaciation when earth’s climate was much cooler and the emerging land mass supported a tundra-steppe vegetation, a lot like what much of the Lower Yukon Delta looks like today. Later, as the climate warmed and the Bering Land Bridge was covered with water again (about 10,000 years ago), the continental land connection was broken, forcing the Alaskan species to breed primarily on the western and northern coasts of Alaska. Concentrations of spring and fall migrants on St. Lawrence Island and the Seward Peninsula are an indication of the age-old ancestral migration routes that had developed before the most recent flooding of the area that is now known as the Bering Sea.  |
Yellow Warbler:Yellow Warbler Ciivcivciuk Oh what a beauty this little bird is. If you're traveling close to the edge of a river or creek or marsh, you may see him darting around in the willows and alders. If you do, quick grab your binocs and focus on him for a moment, and you'll see the male's vivid golden jacket lined with rusty-red chest streaks. The female is the same bright yellow, but without the streaking. If it's May or June, watch them further, and you may see some interesting courtship behavior. The male might be doing a little flutter-dance in the air to try to attract the favor of a potential mate watching in the branches of a nearby tree. He most assuredly will be singing at the top of his lungs something like: sweet, sweet, sweet, I'm so sweet, or a variation on that theme. By the way, that's what the name ciivcivciuk is all about in Yupik, which indicates it's one of those onomatopoeic names I've already mentioned in other articles. Ciiv, civ, ciuk is the counterpart of the English sweet, sweet, sweet, but there's something more. Civ also seems to relate to the color yellow. To top it all off, for a couple of days or so the male races around after the female as though his life depended on it, something that reminds me of how boys pursue girls among us humans. Actually the lives of future generations of Yellow warblers do depend on this spirited chase, since it ends in the mating of the two birds, and a family bond that lasts from nest building till the young are reared and fledged about a month and a half later. The nest is a remarkable little thing: cup-shaped, compact, strong, neat and made of grass, pieces of bark and dried weeds, and lined with fur and plant down. The female builds it by herself, although the male accompanies the female to the nest every time she carries material to it, and sometimes pitches in to help her. She has been known to filch a few strands of nesting material from a neighbor who may be off doing some shopping for her own nest. When the nest is ready, the mother bird lays between 2-6 greenish- white, brown-speckled eggs and broods them for 11-12 days. While his mate is on the nest he feeds her their usual fare: caterpillars, mosquitoes, mayflies, moths, beetles, spiders and maybe even a few berries. All of this translates into heat through her brood patch and finally into little blind babies that soon try to eat their parents out of house and home. Then it takes both parents working full time 24 hours a day for 9-12 days to provide the nestlings with sufficient high quality protein to allow them to quickly grow big and strong enough to stand on the edge of their nest and take a leap of faith into thin air. Finally they fly up into what must at first seem a dizzying vault of space filled with all sorts of dangerous impediments like branches, frondy tree trunks, lurking goshawks and gawking birdwatchers. It's no wonder that the mortality rate is so high among fledgling birds. Eventually, by July, the fledglings are on their own, and by August they are just about ready to follow the adult birds in their migration south. It's interesting that in Canada and parts of the U.S. where cowbirds exist, Yellow warblers are often parasitized by these much bigger birds. Cowbirds do this by laying eggs in the warbler's nest, expecting the warbler to raise the young with its own. But the Yellow warbler recognizes the bad eggs right away and builds another layer on top of its nest to make sure the cowbird eggs don't hatch; then she lays a new clutch of her own eggs. In one case a cowbird returned five times to lay eggs in a Yellow warbler nest, and the warbler built six layers of nest floors to cover up the cowbird eggs. Back to names. There are more Yupik names for this bird, all of them being a version of cungakcuarnaq, meaning something like, "bile colored (greenish-yellow) little thing." The scientific name, Dendroica petechia, means "red-spotted tree dweller." The common English name is self-explanatory and, as in Yupik, there are several other names that are variations on the same theme, yellow: Blue-eyed yellow warbler, Golden warbler, Summer warbler, Summer yellowbird, Wild canary, Yellowbird, Yellow poll and Yellow titmouse.  |
Yellow-rumped Warbler:Yellow-rumped Warbler Ussukasscengiiraq (?) Birders don't call this little guy "butter butt" for nothing. The bright patches of butter yellow under its wings, on its topknot and especially on its rump earn it both its common name and its nickname. Although it is Alaska's most numerous wood warbler, it only nests in the wooded areas of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. I saw it often when I taught in the lower Yukon village of Marshall between 1990-2000. The scientific name for this handsome warbler is Dendroica coronata, meaning, "crowned tree dweller," but in those ten years in Marshall, I never came up with more than the Yupik name, Ussukaascengiiraq, which translates loosely as "one having a little nail-like beak." This also happens to be the name I found for Townsend's warbler, so if anyone has the final answer I would appreciate knowing. In any case, my dad's favorite moniker for this little bird was Myrtle warbler. It was given this name because of its fondness for berries of the eastern wax myrtle and other northern berries, including cranberries, bunchberries and blueberries. I still refer to it by this name. Myrtles are actually unique among warblers in their ability to eat berries. Where most other warblers are strictly insect eaters, Myrtles are more flexible in their diet since they can digest the wax coatings on berries. This allows them to stay later in the fall and arrive earlier in spring than their Alaskan cousins. When the Myrtles do arrive here, they come in waves, the males in the vanguard, drifting through the treetops of spruce and still leafless aspens, birch and poplar. If you listen closely, you might hear the males singing their weak juncolike trill as they move through the area. After a male sets up his home territory and the females begin to arrive, he changes his tune and sings a high-pitched, sidl sidl sidl sidl sidl seedl seedl seedl seedl, trying to attract an eligible female to be his mate. When a female enters his claimed nesting ground, he follows her everywhere, fluffing up his side feathers, raising his wings and colorful crown feathers, fluttering and calling sweetly. This usually does the trick, and soon afterward mom builds their nest high on a horizontal limb of a spruce or deciduous tree. She shapes it in the form of an open cup using bark, twigs and wildflowers, then lines it with hair and feathers in such a way as to curve over and partially cover the top of the nest. Since Myrtles are early nesters in the north, they must protect their eggs as much as possible from the elements. Four or five creamy white, brown-splotched eggs are laid, then incubated mostly by the mother bird, although dad may sometimes help out. In 12-13 days the young peck their way out of the eggs, and both parents then begin to feed them in earnest. They are nestlings for only another 10-12 days, at which time they leave the nest. Two or three days later they are able to fly short distances and follow dad around to be fed while mom begins brooding a second clutch of eggs. In winter I have seen these migrant warblers in Mexico and Central America where they are known as "chipes" (after their winter call) and "reinitas" ("little queens"). They also have other common English names: Golden-crowned flycatcher, Golden-crowned warbler, Myrtle-bird, and Yellow-rump. Since they can live for about six years, the male birds you feast your eyes on in your backyard may be the same ones for at least that long. Happy birding.  |
