GREEN, GREENISH GRAY, OLIVE, AND YELLOWISH OLIVE BIRDS
Tree Swallow Ruby-throated Humming-bird Golden-crowned Kinglet Ruby-crowned Kinglet Solitary Vireo Red-eyed Vireo White-eyed Vireo Warbling Vireo Ovenbird Worm-eating Warbler Acadian Flycatcher Yellow-bellied Flycatcher Black-throated Green Warbler
Look also among the Olive-brown Birds, especially for the Cuckoos, Alice's and the Olive-backed Thrushes; and look in the yellow group, many of whose birds are olive also. See also females of the Red Crossbill, Orchard Oriole, Scarlet Tanager, Summer Tanager.
GREEN, GREENISH GRAY, OLIVE, AND YELLOWISH OLIVE BIRDS
TREE SWALLOW (Tachycineta bicolor) Swallow family
Called also: WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW
Length -- 5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide wing spread. Male -- Lustrous dark steel-green above; darker and shading into black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts soft white. Female -- Duller than male. Range -- North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. Migrations -- End of March. September or later. Summer resident.
"The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming." -- Jeremiah, viii. 7.
The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree swallow comes skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with a wide sweep of the wings, in what appears to be a perfect ecstasy of flight. More shy of the haunts of man, and less gregarious than its cousins, it is usually to be seen during migration flying low over the marshes, ponds, and streams with a few chosen friends, keeping up an incessant warbling twitter while performing their bewildering and tireless evolutions as they catch their food on the wing. Their white breasts flash in the sunlight, and it is only when they dart near you, and skim close along the surface of the water, that you discover their backs to be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence.
It is probable that these birds keep near the waterways because their favorite insects and wax-berries are more plentiful in such places: but this peculiarity has led many people to the absurd belief that the tree swallow buries itself under the mud of ponds in winter in a state of hibernation. No bird's breathing apparatus is made to operate under mud.
In unsettled districts these swallows nest in hollow trees, hence their name; but with that laziness that forms a part of the degeneracy of civilization, they now gladly accept the boxes about men's homes set up for the martins. Thousands of these beautiful birds have been shot on the Long Island marshes and sold to New York epicures for snipe.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD (Trochilus colubris) Humming-bird Family
[Called also RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD, AOU 1998]
Length -- 3.5 to 3.75 inches. A trifle over half as long as the English sparrow. The smallest bird we have. Male -- Bright metallic green above; wings and tail darkest, with ruddy-purplish reflections and dusky-white tips on outer tail quills. Throat and breast brilliant metallic -- red in one light, orange flame in another, and dusky orange in another, according as the light strikes the plumage. Sides greenish; underneath lightest gray, with whitish border outlining the brilliant breast. Bill long and needle-like. Female -- Without the brilliant feathers on throat; darker gray beneath. Outer tail-quills are banded with black and tipped with white. Range -- Eastern North America, from northern Canada to the Gulf Of Mexico in summer. Winters in Central America. Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident.
This smallest, most exquisite and unabashed of our bird neighbors cannot be mistaken, for it is the only one of its kin found east of the plains and north of Florida, although about four hundred species, native only to the New World, have been named by scientists. How does it happen that this little tropical jewel alone flashes about our Northern gardens? Does it never stir the spirit of adventure and emulation in the glistening breasts of its stay-at-home cousins in the tropics by tales of luxuriant tangles of honeysuckle and clematis on our cottage porches; of deep-cupped trumpet-flowers climbing over the walls of old-fashioned gardens, where larkspur, narcissus, roses, and phlox, that crowd the box-edged beds, are more gay and honey-laden than their little brains can picture? Apparently it takes only the wish to be in a place to transport one of these little fairies either from the honeysuckle trellis to the canna bed or from Yucatan to the Hudson. It is easy to see how to will and to fly are allied in the minds of the humming-birds, as they are in the Latin tongue. One minute poised in midair, apparently motionless before a flower while draining the nectar from its deep cup -- though the humming of its wings tells that it is suspended there by no magic -- the next instant it has flashed out of sight as if a fairy's wand had made it suddenly invisible. Without seeing the hummer, it might be, and often is, mistaken for a bee improving the "shining hour."
At evening one often hears of a "humming-bird" going the rounds of the garden, but at this hour it is usually the sphinx-moth hovering above the flower-beds -- the one other creature besides the bee for which the bird is ever mistaken. The postures and preferences of this beautiful large moth make the mistake a very natural one.
The ruby-throat is strangely fearless and unabashed. It will dart among the vines on the veranda while the entire household are assembled there, and add its hum to that of the conversation in a most delightfully neighborly way. Once a glistening little sprite, quite undaunted by the size of an audience that sat almost breathless enjoying his beauty, thrust his bill into one calyx after another on a long sprig of honeysuckle held in the hand.
And yet, with all its friendliness -- or is it simply fearlessness? -- the bird is a desperate duellist, and will lunge his deadly blade into the jewelled breast of an enemy at the slightest provocation and quicker than thought. All the heat of his glowing throat seems to be transferred to his head while the fight continues, sometimes even to the death -- a cruel, but marvellously beautiful sight as the glistening birds dart and tumble about beyond the range of peace-makers.
High up in a tree, preferably one whose knots and lichen-covered excrescences are calculated to help conceal the nest that so cleverly imitates them, the mother humming-bird saddles her exquisite cradle to a horizontal limb. She lines it with plant down, fluffy bits from cat-tails, and the fronds of fern, felting the material into a circle that an elm-leaf amply roofs over. Outside, lichens or bits of bark blend the nest so harmoniously with its surroundings that one may look long and thoroughly before discovering it. Two infinitesimal, white eggs tax the nest accommodation to its utmost.
In the mating season the female may be seen perching -- a posture one rarely catches her gay lover in -- preening her dainty but sombre feathers with ladylike nicety. The young birds do a great deal of perching before they gain the marvellously rapid wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly within three weeks after they are hatched. By the time the trumpet-vine is in bloom they dart and sip and utter a shrill little squeak among the flowers, in company with the old birds.
During the nest-building and incubation the male bird keeps so aggressively on the defensive that he often betrays to a hitherto unsuspecting intruder the location of his home. After the young birds have to be fed he is most diligent in collecting food, that consists not alone of the sweet juices of flowers, as is popularly supposed, but also of aphides and plant-lice that his proboscis-like tongue licks off the garden foliage literally like a streak of lightning.
Both parents feed the young by regurgitation -- a process disgusting to the human observer, whose stomach involuntarily revolts at the sight so welcome to the tiny, squeaking, hungry birds.
RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus calendula) Kinglet family
Called also: RUBY-CROWNED WREN; RUBY-CROWNED WARBLER
Length -- 4.25 to 4.5 inches. About two inches smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Upper parts grayish olive-green, brighter nearer the tail; wings and tail dusky, edged with yellowish olive. Two whitish wing-bars. Breast and underneath light yellowish gray. In the adult male a vermilion spot on crown of his ash-gray head. Female -- Similar, but without the vermilion crest. Range -- North America. Breeds from northern United States northward. Winters from southern limits of its breeding range to Central America and Mexico. Migrations -- October. April. Rarely a winter resident at the North. Most common during its migrations.
A trifle larger than the golden-crowned kinglet, with a vermilion crest instead of a yellow and flame one, and with a decided preference for a warmer winter climate, and the ruby-crown's chief distinguishing characteristics are told. These rather confusing relatives would be less puzzling if it were the habit of either to keep quiet long enough to focus the opera-glasses on their crowns, which it only rarely is while some particularly promising haunt of insects that lurk beneath the rough bark of the evergreens has to be thoroughly explored. At all other times both kinglets keep up an incessant fluttering and twinkling among the twigs and leaves at the ends of the branches, jerking their tiny bodies from twig to twig in the shrubbery, hanging head downward, like a nuthatch, and most industriously feeding every second upon the tiny insects and larvae hidden beneath the bark and leaves. They seem to be the feathered expression of perpetual motion. And how dainty and charming these tiny sprites are! They are not at all shy; you may approach them quite close if you will, for the birds are simply too intent on their business to be concerned with yours.
If a sharp lookout be kept for these ruby-crowned migrants, that too often slip away to the south before we know they have come, we notice that they appear about a fortnight ahead of the golden-crested species, since the mild, soft air of our Indian summer is exactly to their liking. At this season there is nothing in the bird's "thin, metallic call-note, like a vibrating wire," to indicate that he is one of our finest songsters. But listen for him during the spring migration, when a love-song is already ripening in his tiny throat. What a volume of rich, lyrical melody pours from the Norway spruce, where the little musician is simply practising to perfect the richer, fuller song that he sings to his nesting mate in the far north! The volume is really tremendous, coming from so tiny a throat. Those who have heard it in northern Canada describe it as a flute-like and mellow warble full of intricate phrases past the imitating. Dr. Coues says of it: "The kinglet's exquisite vocalization defies description."
Curiously enough, the nest of this bird, that is not at all rare, has been discovered only six times. It would appear to be over large for the tiny bird, until we remember that kinglets are wont to have a numerous progeny in their pensile, globular home. It is made of light, flimsy material -- moss, strips of bark, and plant fibre well knit together and closely lined with feathers, which must be a grateful addition to the babies, where they are reared in evergreens in cold, northern woods.
GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus satrapa) Kinglet family
Called also: GOLDEN-CROWNED GOLDCREST; FIERY CROWNED WREN.
Length -- 4 to 4.25 inches. About two inches smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Upper parts grayish olive-green; wings and tail dusky, margined with olive-green. Underneath soiled whitish. Centre of crown bright orange, bordered by yellow and en. closed by black line. Cheeks gray; a whitish line over the eye. Female -- Similar, but centre of crown lemon-yellow and more grayish underneath. Range -- North America generally. Breeds from northern United States northward. Winters chiefly from North Carolina to Central America, but many remain north all the year. Migrations -- September. April. Chiefly a winter resident south Of Canada.
If this cheery little winter neighbor would keep quiet long enough, we might have a glimpse of the golden crest that distinguishes him from his equally lively cousin, the ruby-crowned; but he is so constantly flitting about the ends of the twigs, peering at the bark for hidden insects, twinkling his wings and fluttering among the evergreens with more nervous restlessness than a vireo, that you may know him well before you have a glimpse of his tri-colored crown.
When the autumn foliage is all aglow with yellow and flame this tiny sprite comes out of the north where neither nesting nor moulting could rob him of his cheerful spirits. Except the humming-bird and the winter wren, he is the smallest bird we have. And yet, somewhere stored up in his diminutive body, is warmth enough to withstand zero weather. With evident enjoyment of the cold, he calls out a shrill, wiry zee, zee, zee, that rings merrily from the pines and spruces when our fingers are too numb to hold the opera glasses in an attempt to follow his restless fittings from branch to branch. Is it one of the unwritten laws of birds that the smaller their bodies the greater their activity?
When you see one kinglet about, you may be sure there are others not far away, for, except in the nesting season, its habits are distinctly social, its friendliness extending to the humdrum brown creeper, the chickadees, and the nuthatches, in whose company it is often seen; indeed, it is likely to be in almost any flock of the winter birds. They are a merry band as they go exploring the trees together. The kinglet can hang upside down, too, like the other acrobats, many of whose tricks he has learned; and it can pick off insects from a tree with as business-like an air as the brown creeper, but with none of that soulless bird's plodding precision.
In the early spring, just before this busy little sprite leaves us to nest in Canada or Labrador -- for heat is the one thing that he can't cheerfully endure -- a gushing, lyrical song bursts from his tiny throat -- a song whose volume is so out of proportion to the bird's size that Nuttall's classification of kinglets with wrens doesn't seem far wrong after all. Only rarely is a nest found so far south as the White Mountains. It is said to be extraordinarily large for so small a bird but that need not surprise us when we learn that as many as ten creamy-white eggs, blotched with brown and lavender, are no uncommon number for the pensile cradle to hold. How do the tiny parents contrive to cover so many eggs and to feed such a nestful of fledglings?
SOLITARY VIREO (Vireo solitarius) Vireo or Greenlet family
Called also: BLUE-HEADED VIREO [AOU 1998]
Length -- 5.5 to 7 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Dusky olive above; head bluish gray, with a white line around the eye, spreading behind the eye into a patch. Beneath whitish, with yellow-green wash on the sides. Wings dusky olive, with two distinct white bars. Tail dusky, some quills edged with white. Female -- Similar, but her head is dusky olive. Range -- United States to plains, and the southern British provinces. Winters in Florida and southward. Migrations -- May. Early October. Common during migrations; more rarely a summer resident south of Massachusetts.
By no means the recluse that its name would imply, the solitary vireo, while a bird of the woods, shows a charming curiosity about the stranger with opera-glasses in hand, who has penetrated to the deep, swampy tangles, where it chooses to live. Peering at you through the green undergrowth with an eye that seems especially conspicuous because of its encircling white rim, it is at least as sociable and cheerful as any member of its family, and Mr. Bradford Torrey credits it with "winning tameness." "Wood-bird as it is," he says, "it will sometimes permit the greatest familiarities. Two birds I have seen, which allowed themselves to be stroked in the freest manner, while sitting on the eggs, and which ate from my hand as readily as any pet canary."
The solitary vireo also builds a pensile nest, swung from the crotch of a branch, not so high from the ground as the yellow-throated vireos nor so exquisitely finished, but still a beautiful little structure of pine-needles, plant-fibre, dry leaves, and twigs, all lichen-lined and bound and rebound with coarse spiders' webs.
The distinguishing quality of this vireo's celebrated song is its tenderness: a pure, serene uplifting of its loving, trustful nature that seems inspired by a fine spirituality.
RED-EYED VIREO (Vireo olivaceus) Vireo or Greenlet family
Called also: THE PREACHER
Length -- 5.75 to 6.25 inches. A fraction smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Upper parts light olive-green; well-defined slaty-gray cap, with black marginal line, below which, and forming an exaggerated eyebrow, is a line of white. A brownish band runs from base of bill through the eye. The iris is ruby-red. Underneath white, shaded with light greenish yellow on sides and on under tail and wing coverts. Range -- United States to Rockies and northward. Wnters in Central and South America. Migrations -- April. October. Common summer resident.
"You see it -- you know it -- do you hear me? Do you believe it?" is Wilson Flagg's famous interpretation of the song of this commonest of all the vireos, that you cannot mistake with such a key. He calls the bird the preacher from its declamatory style; an up-and-down warble delivered with a rising inflection at the close and followed by an impressive silence, as if the little green orator were saying, "I pause for a reply."
Notwithstanding its quiet coloring, that so closely resembles the leaves it hunts among, this vireo is rather more noticeable than its relatives because of its slaty cap and the black-and-white lines over its ruby eye, that, in addition to the song, are its marked characteristics.
Whether she is excessively stupid or excessively kind, the mother-vireo has certainly won for herself no end of ridicule by allowing the cowbird to deposit a stray egg in the exquisitely made, pensile nest, where her own tiny white eggs are lying and though the young cowbird crowd and worry her little fledglings and eat their dinner as fast as she can bring it in, no displeasure or grudging is shown towards the dusky intruder that is sure to upset the rightful heirs out of the nest before they are able to fly.
In the heat of a midsummer noon, when nearly every other bird's voice is hushed, and only the locust seems to rejoice in the fierce sunshine, the little red-eyed vireo goes persistently about its business of gathering insects from the leaves, not flitting nervously about like a warbler, or taking its food on the wing like a flycatcher, but patiently and industriously dining where it can, and singing as it goes.
When a worm is caught it is first shaken against a branch to kill it before it is swallowed. Vireos haunt shrubbery and trees with heavy foliage, all their hunting, singing, resting, and home-building being done among the leaves -- never on the ground.
WHITE-EYED VIREO (Vireo noveboracensis) Vireo or Greenlet family
Male -- 5 to 5.3 inches. An inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Upper parts bright olive-green, washed with grayish. Throat and underneath white; the breast and sides greenish yellow; wings have two distinct bars of yellowish white. Yellow line from beak to and around the eye, which has a white iris. Feathers of wings and tail brownish and edged with yellow. Range -- United States to the Rockies, and to the Gulf regions And beyond in winter. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
"Pertest of songsters," the white-eyed vireo makes whatever neighborhood it enters lively at once. Taking up a residence in the tangled shrubbery or thickety undergrowth, it immediately begins to scold like a crotchety old wren. It becomes irritated over the merest trifles -- a passing bumblebee, a visit from another bird to its tangle, an unsuccessful peck at a gnat -- anything seems calculated to rouse its wrath and set every feather on its little body a-trembling, while it sharply snaps out what might perhaps be freely constructed into "cuss-words."
And yet the inscrutable mystery is that this virago meekly permits the lazy cowbird to deposit an egg in its nest, and will patiently sit upon it, though it is as large as three of her own tiny eggs; and when the little interloper comes out from his shell the mother-bird will continue to give it the most devoted care long after it has shoved her poor little starved babies out of the nest to meet an untimely death in the smilax thicket below.
An unusual variety of expression distinguishes this bird's voice from the songs of the other vireos, which are apt to be monotonous, as they are incessant. If you are so fortunate to approach the white-eyed vireo before he suspects your presence, you may hear him amusing himself by jumbling together snatches of the songs of the other birds in a sort of potpourri; or perhaps he will be scolding or arguing with an imaginary foe, then dropping his voice and talking confidentially to himself. Suddenly he bursts into a charming, simple little song, as if the introspection had given him reason for real joy. All these vocal accomplishments suggest the chat at once; but the minute your intrusion is discovered the sharp scolding, that is fairly screamed at you from an enraged little throat, leaves no possible shadow of a doubt as to the bird you have disturbed. It has the most emphatic call and song to be heard in the woods; it snaps its words off very short. "Chick-a-rer chick" is its usual call-note, jerked out with great spitefulness.
Wilson thus describes the jealously guarded nest: "This bird builds a very neat little nest, often in the figure of an inverted cone; it is suspended by the upper end of the two sides, on the circular bend of a prickly vine, a species of smilax, that generally grows in low thickets. Outwardly it is constructed of various light materials, bits of rotten wood, fibres of dry stalks, of weeds, pieces of paper (commonly newspapers, an article almost always found about its nest, so that some of my friends have given it the name of the politician); all these materials are interwoven with the silk of the caterpillars, and the inside is lined with fine, dry grass and hair."
WARBLING VIREO (Vireo gilvus) Vireo or Greenlet family
Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Ashy olive-green above, with head and neck ash-colored. Dusky line over the eye. Underneath whitish, faintly washed with dull yellow, deepest on sides; no bars on wings. Range -- North America, from Hudson Bay to Mexico. Migrations -- May. Late September or early October. Summer resident.
This musical little bird shows a curious preference for rows of trees in the village street or by the ride, where he can be sure of an audience to listen to his rich, continuous warble. There is a mellowness about his voice, which rises loud, but not altogether cheerfully, above the bird chorus, as if he were a gifted but slightly disgruntled contralto. Too inconspicuously dressed, and usually too high in the tree-top to be identified without opera-glasses, we may easily mistake him by his voice for one of the warbler family, which is very closely allied to the vireos. Indeed, this warbling vireo seems to be the connecting link between them.
Morning and afternoon, but almost never in the evening, we may hear him rippling out song after song as he feeds on insects and berries about the garden. But this familiarity lasts only until nesting time, for off he goes with his little mate to some unfrequented lane near a wood until their family is reared, when, with a perceptibly happier strain in his voice, he once more haunts our garden and row of elms before taking the southern journey.
OVENBIRD (Seiurus aurocapillus) Wood Warbler family
Called also: GOLDEN-CROWNED THRUSH; THE TEACHER; WOOD WAGTAIL; GOLDEN-CROWNED WAGTAIL; GOLDEN-CROWNED ACCENTOR
Length -- 6 to 6.15 inches. Just a shade smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Upper parts olive, with an orange-brown crown, bordered by black lines that converge toward the bill. Under parts white; breast spotted and streaked on the sides. White eye-ring. Range -- United States, to Pacific slope. Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident.
Early in May you may have the good fortune to see this little bird of the woods strutting in and out of the garden shrubbery with a certain mock dignity, like a child wearing its father's boots. Few birds can walk without appearing more or less ridiculous, and however gracefully and prettily it steps, this amusing little wagtail is no exception. When seen at all -- which is not often, for it is shy -- it is usually on the ground, not far from the shrubbery or a woodland thicket, under which it will quickly dodge out of sight at the merest suspicion of a footstep. To most people the bird is only a voice calling, "TEACHER TEACHER. TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!" as Mr. Burroughs has interpreted the notes that go off in pairs like a series of little explosions, softly at first, then louder and louder and more shrill until the bird that you at first thought far away seems to be shrieking his penetrating crescendo into your very ears. But you may look until you are tired before you find him in the high, dry wood, never near water.
In the driest parts of the wood, here the ground is thickly carpeted with dead leaves, you may some day notice a little bunch of them, that look as if a plant, in pushing its way up through the ground, had raised the leaves, rootlets, and twigs a trifle.
Examine the spot more carefully, and on one side you find an opening, and within the ball of earth, softly lined with grass, lie four or five cream-white, speckled eggs. It is only by a happy accident that this nest of the ovenbird is discovered. The concealment could not be better. It is this peculiarity of nest construction -- in shape like a Dutch oven -- that has given the bird what DeKay considers its "trivial name." Not far from the nest the parent birds scratch about in the leaves like diminutive barnyard fowls, for the grubs and insects hiding under them. But at the first suspicion of an intruder their alarm becomes pitiful. Panic-stricken, they become fairly limp with fear, and drooping her wings and tail, the mother-bird drags herself hither and thither over the ground.
As utterly bewildered as his mate, the male darts, flies, and tumbles about through the low branches, jerking and wagging his tail in nervous spasms until you have beaten a double-quick retreat.
In nesting time, at evening, a very few have heard the "luxurious nuptial song" of the ovenbird; but it is a song to haunt the memory forever afterward. Burroughs appears to be the first writer to record this "rare bit of bird melody." "Mounting by easy flight to the top of the tallest tree," says the author of "Wake-Robin," "the ovenbird launches into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song -- clear, ringing, copious, rivalling the goldfinch's in vivacity and the linnet's in melody."
WORM-EATING WARBLER (Helmintherus vermivorus) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 5.50 inches. Less than an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Greenish olive above. Head yellowish brown, With two black stripes through crown to the nape; also black Lines from the eyes to neck. Under parts buffy and white. Range -- Eastern parts of United States. Nests as far north as southern Illinois and southern Connecticut. Winters in the Gulf States and southward. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
In the Delaware Valley and along the same parallel, this inconspicuous warbler is abundant, but north of New Jersey it is rare enough to give an excitement to the day on which you discover it. No doubt it is commoner than we suppose, for its coloring blends so admirably with its habitats that it is probably very often overlooked. Its call-note, a common chirp, has nothing distinguishing about it, and all ornithologists confess to having been often misled by its song into thinking it came from the chipping sparrow. It closely resembles that of the pine warbler also. If it were as nervously active as most warblers, we should more often discover it, but it is quite as deliberate as a vireo, and in the painstaking way in which it often circles around a tree while searching for spiders and other insects that infest the trunks, it reminds us of the brown creeper. Sunny slopes and hillsides covered with thick undergrowth are its preferred foraging and nesting haunts. It is often seen hopping directly on the dry ground, where it places its nest, and it never mounts far above it. The well-drained, sunny situation for the home is chosen with the wisdom of a sanitary expert.
ACADIAN FLYCATCHER (Empidonax virescens) Flycatcher family
Called also: SMALL GREEN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER; SMALL PEWEE
Length -- 5.75 to 6 inches. A trifle smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Dull olive above. Two conspicuous yellowish wing-bars. Throat white, shading into pale yellow on breast. Light gray or white underneath. Upper part of bill black; lower mandible flesh-color. White eye-ring. Female -- Greener above and more yellow below. Range -- From Canada to Mexico, Central America, and West Indies. Most common in south temperate latitudes. Winters in southerly limit of range. Migrations -- April. September. Summer resident.
When all our northern landscape takes on the exquisite, soft green, gray, and yellow tints of early spring, this little flycatcher, in perfect color-harmony with the woods it darts among, comes out of the south. It might be a leaf that is being blown about, touched by the sunshine filtering through the trees, and partly shaded by the young foliage casting its first shadows.
Woodlands, through which small streams meander lazily, inviting swarms of insects to their boggy shores, make ideal hunting grounds for the Acadian flycatcher. It chooses a low rather than a high, conspicuous perch, that other members of its family invariably select; and from such a lookout it may be seen launching into the air after the passing gnat -- darting downward, then suddenly mounting upward in its aerial hunt, the vigorous clicks of the beak as it closes over its tiny victims testifying to the bird's unerring aim and its hearty appetite.
While perching, a constant tail-twitching is kept up; and a faint, fretful "Tshee-kee, tshee-kee" escapes the bird when inactively waiting for a dinner to heave in sight.
In the Middle Atlantic States its peeping sound and the clicking of its particolored bill are infrequently heard in the village streets in the autumn, when the shy and solitary birds are enticed from the deep woods by a prospect of a more plentiful diet of insects, attracted by the fruit in orchards and gardens.
Never far from the ground, on two or more parallel branches, the shallow, unsubstantial nest is laid. Some one has cleverly described it as "a tuft of hay caught by the limb from a ldriven under it," but this description omits all mention of the quantities of blossoms that must be gathered to line the cradle for the tiny, cream white eggs spotted with brown.
YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER (Empidonax flaviventris) Flycatcher family
Length -- 5 to 5.6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Rather dark, but true olive-green above. Throat and breast yellowish olive, shading into pale yellow underneath, including wing linings and under tail coverts. Wings have yellowish bars. Whitish ring around eye. Upper part of bill black, under part whitish or flesh-colored. Female -- Smaller, with brighter yellow under parts and more decidedly yellow wing-bars. Range -- North America, from Labrador to Panama, and westward from the Atlantic to the plains. Winters in Central America. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident. More commonly a migrant only.
This is the most yellow of the small flycatchers and the only Eastern species with a yellow instead of a white throat. Without hearing its call-note, "pse-ek-pse-ek," which it abruptly sneezes rather than utters, it is quite impossible, as it darts among the trees, to tell it from the Acadian flycatcher, with which even Audubon confounded it. Both these little birds choose the same sort of retreats -- well-timbered woods near a stream that attracts myriads of insects to its spongy shores -- and both are rather shy and solitary. The yellow-bellied species has a far more northerly range, however, than its Southern relative or even the small green-crested flycatcher. It is rare in the Middle States, not common even in New England, except in the migrations, but from the Canada border northward its soft, plaintive whistle, which is its love-song, may be heard in every forest where it nests. All the flycatchers seem to make a noise with so much struggle, such convulsive jerkings of head and tail, and flutterings of the wings that, considering the scanty success of their musical attempts, it is surprising they try to lift their voices at all when the effort almost literally lifts them off their feet.
While this little flycatcher is no less erratic than its Acadian cousin, its nest is never slovenly. One couple had their home in a wild-grape bower in Pennsylvania; a Virginia creeper in New Jersey supported another cradle that was fully twenty feet above the ground; but in Labrador, where the bird has its chosen breeding grounds, the bulky nest is said to be invariably placed either in the moss by the brookside or in some old stump, should the locality be too swampy.
BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER (Dendroica virens) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 5 inches. Over an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Back and crown of head bright yellowish olive-green. Forehead, band over eye, cheeks, and sides of neck rich yellow. Throat, upper breast, and stripe along sides black. Underneath yellowish white. Wings and tail brownish olive, the former with two white bars, the latter with much white in outer quills. In autumn, plumage resembling the female's. Female -- Similar; chin yellowish; throat and breast dusky, the black being mixed with yellowish. Range -- Eastern North America, from Hudson Bay to Central America and Mexico. Nests north of Illinois and New York. Winters in tropics. Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident north of New Jersey.
There can be little difficulty in naming a bird so brilliantly and distinctly marked as this green, gold, and black warbler, that lifts up a few pure, sweet, tender notes, loud enough to attract attention when he visits the garden. "See-see, see-saw," he sings, but there is a tone of anxiety betrayed in the simple, sylvan strain that always seems as if the bird needed reassuring, possibly due to the rising inflection, like an interrogative, of the last notes.
However abundant about our homes during the migrations, this warbler, true to the family instinct, retreats to the woods to nest -- not always so far away as Canada, the nesting ground of most warblers, for in many Northern States the bird is commonly found throughout the summer. Doubtless it prefers tall evergreen trees for its mossy, grassy nest; but it is not always particular, so that the tree be a tall one with a convenient fork in an upper branch.
Early in September increased numbers emerge from the woods, the plumage of the male being less brilliant than when we saw it last, as if the family cares of the summer had proved too taxing. For nearly a month longer they hunt incessantly, with much flitting about the leaves and twigs at the ends of branches in the shrubbery and evergreens, for the tiny insects that the warblers must devour by the million during their all too brief visit.
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