American Redstart
Setophaga ruticilla
American Redstart · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 31 August 2025
An American Redstart at the Botanic Garden at the end of August, olive rather than black with yellow rather than orange patches: a female or a first-year male, since adult males don't get the full black-and-orange until their second year. Redstarts breed in the deciduous woods of the East and Canada and pass through Brooklyn in numbers on the way to the Caribbean.
They fan the tail and flash these patches deliberately while foraging, apparently to startle insects into moving and giving themselves away. In Latin America it is called candelita, the little candle, for the same flash.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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