Voice of the Wild

This is Illinois Extension’s Voice of the Wild. Our birdsong will start in five seconds, so find someplace quiet, take a deep breath, and enjoy.

This big witchity-witchety song, often heard in tallgrass prairies and open marshes, comes from a little chunky warbler with a yellow throat and black mask. Males call out all summer long, sometimes popping out of the low reeds and grasses to do so. Listen out for their scolding rattle call anywhere there’s tall grass with a little water nearby. While Females lack the male’s distinctive black mask, they keep the yellow throat as well as the bird’s distinctive crisp chip.
This is the Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, from the family of wood warblers, Parulidae. Here’s that witchety-witchety song again.

The yellowthroat’s rattle call used in this episode was posted by Doug Raybuck to xeno canto.org. Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab of Ornithology for the rest of the bird sounds. And thank you for tuning in to learn a new bird call with Illinois Extension.