Bay on the Bough

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches

     This is a painting of a female, or immature male, Bay-breasted Warbler that came through my neck of the woods on August 13, 2025. It was hunting for insects fairly low in the branches of a spruce tree, about 15 feet up. It spent time in an adjacent cedar tree, too. These birds really like to eat spruce budworms, an insect that morphs into a small moth at maturity. Budworms can cause significant damage to balsam fir, white spruce, larch and hemlock forests. In turn, Bay-breasted Warbler populations can increase when there are severe budworm outbreaks. 
     Bay-breasted Warblers aren’t birds that I see often, and I’ve gotten lucky spotting them during fall migration, specifically around the second week of August at my home in Duluth, MN. They are a long-distance migrant that travels through the Caribbean to the northwestern reaches of South America in the fall. This year’s spring migration yielded my first-ever sighting of a breeding male Bay-breasted Warbler in Moose Lake, MN. What a handsome fellow!

My photo of a breeding male Bay Breasted Warbler, May 17, 2025. Moose Lake, Minnesota.

Stay wild, my friends!


Copyright notification: The internet is a scary place. I have seen my artwork on unauthorized websites. This is called stealing, also known as copyright infringement. The only authorized websites allowed to display my artwork are www.beccamulenburg.com, www.beccamulenburg.blogspot.com, and galleries currently showing my work. Any other website, posting, sales of my work, or the like, is illegitimate and operating under copyright infringement which is against the law.  Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. Please be aware. Copyrights do not transfer with the sale of any of my artworks.


Location: Duluth, MN 55811, USA

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