BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW AND ORANGE
Yellow-throated Vireo American Goldfinch Evening Grosbeak Blue-winged Warbler Canadian Warbler Hooded Warbler Kentucky Warbler Magnolia Warbler Mourning Warbler Nashville Warbler Pine Warbler Prairie Warbler Wilson's Warbler or Blackcap Yellow Warbler or Summer Yellowbird Yellow Redpoll Warbler Yellow-breasted Chat Maryland Yellowthroat Blackburnian Warbler Redstart Baltimore Oriole
Look also among the Yellowish Olive Birds in the preceding group; and among the Brown Birds for the Meadowlark and Flicker. See also Parula Warbler (Slate) and Yellow-bellied Woodpecker (Black and White).
BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW AND ORANGE
YELLOW-THROATED VIREO (Vireo flavifrons) Vireo or Greenlet family
Length -- 5.5. to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Lemon-yellow on throat, upper breast; line around the eye and forehead. Yellow, shading into olive-green, on head, back, and shoulders. Underneath white. Tail dark brownish, edged with white. Wings a lighter shade, with two white bands across, and some quills edged with white. Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Rockies. Winters in the tropics. Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant; more rarely resident.
This is undoubtedly the beauty of the vireo family -- a group of neat, active, stoutly built, and vigorous little birds of yellow, greenish, and white plumage; birds that love the trees, and whose feathers reflect the coloring of the leaves they hide, hunt, and nest among. "We have no birds," says Bradford Torrey, "so unsparing of their music: they sing from morning till night."
The yellow-throated vireo partakes of all the family characteristics, but, in addition to these, it eclipses all its relatives in the brilliancy of its coloring and in the art of nest-building, which it has brought to a state of hopeless perfection. No envious bird need try to excel the exquisite finish of its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging running water that threatens too precipitous a bath to tempt the young climbers.
However common in the city parks and suburban gardens this bird may be during the migrations, it delights in a secluded retreat overgrown with tall trees and near a stream, such as is dear to the solitary vireo as well when the nesting time approaches. High up in the trees we hear its rather sad, persistent strain, that is more in harmony with the dim forest than with the gay flower garden, where, if the truth must be told, its song is both monotonous and depressing. Mr. Bicknell says it is the only vireo that sings as it flies.
AMERICAN GOLDFINCH (Spinus tristis) Finch family
Called also: WILD CANARY; YELLOWBIRD; THISTLE BIRD
Length -- 5 to 5.2 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- In summer plumage: Bright yellow, except on crown of head, frontlet, wings, and tail, which are black. Whitish markings on wings give effect of bands. Tail with white on inner webs. In winter plumage: Head yellow-olive; no frontlet; black drab, with reddish tinge; shoulders and throat yellow; soiled brownish white underneath. Female -- Brownish olive above, yellowish white beneath. Range -- North America, from the tropics to the Fur Countries and westward to the Columbia River and California. Common throughout its range. Migrations -- May-October. Common summer resident, frequently Seen throughout the winter as well.
An old field, overgrown with thistles and tall, stalky wild flowers, is the paradise of the goldfinches, summer or winter. Here they congregate in happy companies while the sunshine and goldenrod are as bright as their feathers, and cling to the swaying slender stems that furnish an abundant harvest, daintily. lunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at the mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michaelmas daisies; or, when snow covers the same field with a glistening crust, above which the brown stalks offer only a meagre dinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in winter feathers, cling to the swaying stems with cheerful fortitude.
At your approach, the busy company rises on the wing, and with peculiar, wavy flight rise and fall through the air, marking each undulation with a cluster of notes, sweet and clear, that come floating downward from the blue ether, where the birds seem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike.
In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has been drab and brown through the winter months, is moulted or shed -- a change that transforms the bird from a sombre Puritan into the gayest of cavaliers, and seems to wonderfully exalt his spirits. He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody that might be the outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the bird's happy heart.
With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, it is small wonder that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and caged, however inferior their song may be to the European species recently introduced into this country. Heard in Central Park, New York, where they were set at liberty, the European goldfinches seemed to sing with more abandon, perhaps, but with no more sweetness than their American cousins. The song remains at its best all through the summer months, for the bird is a long wooer. It is nearly July before he mates, and not until the tardy cedar birds are house-building in the orchard do the happy pair begin to carry grass, moss, and plant-down to a crotch of some tall tree convenient to a field of such wild flowers as will furnish food to a growing family. Doubtless the birds wait for this food to be in proper condition before they undertake parental duties at all -- the most plausible excuse for their late nesting. The cares evolving from four to six pale-blue eggs will suffice to quiet the father's song for the winter by the first of September, and fade all the glory out of his shining coat. As pretty a sight as any garden offers is when a family of goldfinches alights on the top of a sunflower to feast upon the oily seeds -- a perfect harmony of brown and gold.
EVENING GROSBEAK (Coccothraustes vespertinus) Finch family
Length -- 8 inches. Two inches shorter than the robin. Male -- Forehead, shoulders, and underneath clear yellow: dull yellow on lower back; sides of the head, throat, and breast olive-brown. Crown, tail, and wings black, the latter with white secondary feathers. Bill heavy and blunt, and yellow. Female -- Brownish gray, more less suffused with yellow. Wings and tail blackish, with some white feathers. Range -- Interior of North America. Resident from Manitoba northward. Common winter visitor in northwestern United States and Mississippi Valley; casual winter visitor in northern Atlantic States.
In the winter of 1889-90 Eastern people had the rare treat of becoming acquainted with this common bird of the Northwest, that, in one of its erratic travels, chose to visit New England and the Atlantic States, as far south as Delaware, in great numbers. Those who saw the evening grosbeaks then remember how beautiful their yellow plumage -- a rare winter tint -- looked in the snow-covered trees, where small companies of the gentle and ever tame visitors enjoyed the buds and seeds of the maples, elders, and evergreens. Possibly evening grosbeaks were in vogue for the next season's millinery, or perhaps Eastern ornithologists had a sudden zeal to investigate their structural anatomy. At any rate, these birds, whose very tameness, that showed slight acquaintance with mankind, should have touched the coldest heart, received the warmest kind of a reception from hot shot. The few birds that escaped to the solitudes of Manitoba could not be expected to tempt other travellers eastward by an account of their visit. The bird is quite likely to remain rare in the East.
But in the Mississippi Valley and throughout the northwest, companies of from six to sixty may be regularly counted upon as winter neighbors on almost every farm. Here the females keep up a busy chatting, like a company of cedar birds, and the males punctuate their pauses with a single shrill note that gives little indication of their vocal powers. But in the solitude of the northern forests the love-song is said to resemble the robin's at the start. Unhappily, after a most promising beginning, the bird suddenly stops, as if he were out of breath.
BLUE-WINGED WARBLER (Helminthophila pinus) Wood Warbler family
Called also: BLUE-WINGED YELLOW WARBLER
Length -- 4.75 inches. An inch and a half shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Crown of head and all under parts bright yellow. Back olive-green. Wings and tail bluish slate, the former with white bars, and three outer tail quills with large white patches on their inner webs. Female -- Paler and more olive. Range -- Eastern United States, from southern New England and Minnesota, the northern limit of its nesting range, to Mexico And Central America, where it winters. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
In the naming of warblers, bluish slate is the shade intended when blue is mentioned; so that if you see a dainty little olive and yellow bird with slate-colored wings and tail hunting for spiders in the blossoming orchard or during the early autumn you will have seen the beautiful blue-winged warbler. It has a rather leisurely way of hunting, unlike the nervous, restless flitting about from twig to twig that is characteristic of many of its many cousins. The search is thorough -- bark, stems, blossoms, leaves are inspected for larvae and spiders, with many pretty motions of head and body. Sometimes, hanging with head downward, the bird suggests a yellow titmouse. After blossom time a pair of these warblers, that have done serviceable work in the orchard in their all too brief stay, hurry off to dense woods to nest. They are usually to be seen in pairs at all seasons. Not to "high coniferous trees in northern forests," -- the Mecca of innumerable warblers -- but to scrubby, second growth of woodland borders, or lower trees in the heart of the woods, do these dainty birds retreat. There they build the usual warbler nest of twigs, bits of bark, leaves, and grasses, but with this peculiarity: the numerous leaves with which the nest is wrapped all have their stems pointing upward. Mr. Frank Chapman has admirably defined their song as consisting of "two drawled, wheezy notes -- swee-chee, the first inhaled, the second exhaled."
CANADIAN WARBLER (Sylvania canadensis) Wood Warbler family
Called also: CANADIAN FLYCATCHER; SPOTTED CANADIAN WARBLER; [CANADA WARBLER, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5 to 5.6 inches. About an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Immaculate bluish ash above, without marks on wings or tail; crown spotted with arrow-shaped black marks. Cheeks, line from bill to eye, and underneath clear yellow. Black streaks forming a necklace across the breast. Female -- Paler, with necklace indistinct. Range -- North America, from Manitoba and Labrador to tropics. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident; most abundant in migrations.
Since about one-third of all the song-birds met with in a year's rambles are apt to be warblers, the novice cannot devote his first attention to a better group, confusing though it is by reason of its size and the repetition of the same colors in so many bewildering combinations. Monotony, however, is unknown in the warbler family. Whoever can rightly name every warbler, male and female, on sight is uniquely accomplished.
The jet necklace worn on this bird's breast is its best mark of identification. Its form is particularly slender and graceful, as might be expected in a bird so active, one to whom a hundred tiny insects barely afford a dinner that must often be caught piecemeal as it flies past. To satisfy its appetite, which cannot but be dainty in so thoroughly charming a bird, it lives in low, boggy woods, in such retreats as Wilson's black-capped warbler selects for a like reason. Neither of these two "flycatcher" warblers depends altogether on catching insects on the wing; countless thousands are picked off the under sides of leaves and about the stems of twigs in true warbler fashion.
The Canadian's song is particularly loud, sweet, and vivacious. It is hazardous for any one without long field practice to try to name any warbler by its song alone, but possibly this one's animated music is as characteristic as any.
The nest is built on the ground on a mossy bank or elevated into the root crannies of some large tree, where there is much water in the woods. Bits of bark, dead wood, moss, and fine rootlets, all carefully wrapped with leaves, go to make the pretty cradle. Unhappily, the little Canada warblers are often cheated out of their natural rights, like so many other delightful songbirds, by the greedy interloper that the cowbird deposits in their nest.
HOODED WARBLER (Sylvania mitrata) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 5 to 5.75 inches. About an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Head, neck, chin, and throat black like a hood in mature male specimens only. Hood restricted, or altogether wanting in female and young. Upper parts rich olive. Forehead, cheeks, and underneath yellow. Some conspicuous white on tail feathers. Female -- Duller, and with restricted cowl. Range -- United States east of Rockies, and from southern Michigan and southern New England to West Indies and tropical America, where it winters. Very local. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
This beautifully marked, sprightly little warbler might be mistaken in his immaturity for the yellowthroat; and as it is said to take him nearly three years to grow his hood, with the completed cowl and cape, there is surely sufficient reason here for the despair that often seizes the novice in attempting to distinguish the perplexing warblers. Like its Southern counterpart, the hooded warbler prefers wet woods and low trees rather than high ones, for much of its food consists of insects attracted by the dampness, and many of them must be taken on the wing. Because of its tireless activity the bird's figure is particularly slender and graceful -- a trait, too, to which we owe all the glimpses of it we are likely to get throughout the summer. It has a curious habit of spreading its tail, as if it wished you to take special notice of the white spots that adorn it; not flirting it, as the redstart does his more gorgeous one, but simply opening it like a fan as it flies and darts about.
Its song, which is particularly sweet and graceful, and with more variation than most warblers' music, has been translated "Che-we-eo-tsip, tsip, che-we-eo," again interpreted by Mr. Chapman as "You must come to the woods, or you won't see me."
KENTUCKY WARBLER (Geothlypis formosa) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 5.5 inches. Nearly an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Upper parts olive-green; under parts yellow; a yellow line from the bill passes over and around the eye. Crown of head, patch below the eye, and line defining throat, black. Female -- Similar, but paler, and with grayish instead of black markings. Range -- United States eastward from the Rockies, and from Iowa and Connecticut to Central, America, where it winters. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
No bird is common at the extreme limits of its range, and so this warbler has a reputation for rarity among the New England ornithologists that would surprise people in the middle South and Southwest. After all that may be said in the , a bird is either common or rare to the individual who may or may not have happened to become acquainted with it in any part of its chosen territory. Plenty of people in Kentucky, where we might judge from its name this bird is supposed to be most numerous, have never seen or heard of it, while a student on the Hudson River, within sight of New York, knows it intimately. It also nests regularly in certain parts of the Connecticut Valley. "Who is my neighbor?" is often a question difficult indeed to answer where birds are concerned. In the chapter, "Spring at the Capital," which, with every reading of "Wake Robin," inspires the bird-lover with fresh zeal, Mr. Burroughs writes of the Kentucky warbler: "I meet with him in low, damp places, in the woods, usually on the steep sides of some little run. I hear at intervals a clear, strong, bell-like whistle or warble, and presently catch a glimpse of the bird as he jumps up from the ground to take an insect or worm from the under side of a leaf. This is his characteristic movement. He belongs to the class of ground warblers, and his range is very low, indeed lower than that of any other species with which I am acquainted."
Like the ovenbird and comparatively few others, for most birds hop over the ground, the Kentucky warbler walks rapidly about, looking for insects under the fallen leaves, and poking his inquisitive beak into every cranny where a spider may be lurking. The bird has a pretty, conscious way of flying up to a perch, a few feet above the ground, as a tenor might advance towards the footlights of a stage, to pour forth his clear, penetrating whistle, that in the nesting season especially is repeated over, and over again with tireless persistency.
MAGNOLIA WARBLER (Dendroica maculosa) Wood Warbler family
Called also: BLACK-AND-YELLOW WARBLER; SPOTTED WARBLER; BLUE-HEADED YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. About an inch and a half smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Crown of head slate-color, bordered on either side by a white line; a black line, apparently running through the eye, and a yellow line below it, merging into the yellow throat. Lower back and under parts yellow. Back, wings, and tail blackish olive. Large white patch on the wings, and the middle of the tail-quills white. Throat and sides heavily streaked with black. Female -- Has greener back, is paler, and has less distinct markings. Range -- North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. Summers from northern Michigan and northern New England northward; winters in Central America and Cuba. Migrations -- May. October. Spring and summer migrant.
In spite of the bird's name, one need not look for it in the glossy magnolia trees of the southern gardens more than in the shrubbery on New England lawns, and during the migrations it is quite as likely to be found in one place as in the other. Its true preference, however, is for the spruces and hemlocks of its nesting ground in the northern forests. For these it deserts us after a brief hunt about the tender, young spring foliage and blossoms, where the early worm lies concealed, and before we have become so well acquainted with its handsome clothes that we will instantly recognize it in the duller ones it wears on its return trip in the autumn. The position of the white marks on the tail feathers of this warbler, however, is the clue by which it may be identified at any season or any stage of its growth. If the white bar runs across the middle of the warbler's tail, you can be sure of the identity of the bird. A nervous and restless hunter, it nevertheless seems less shy than many of its kin. Another pleasing characteristic is that it brings back with it in October the loud, clear, rapid whistle with which it has entertained its nesting mate in the Canada woods through the summer.
MOURNING WARBLER (Geothlypis philadelphia) Wood Warbler family
Called also: MOURNING GROUND WARBLER
Length -- 5 to 5.6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Gray head and throat; the breast gray; the feathers with black edges that make them look crinkled, like crape. The black markings converge into a spot on upper breast. Upper parts, except head, olive. Underneath rich yellow. Female -- Similar, but duller; throat and breast buff and dusky where the male is black. Back olive-green. Range -- "Eastern North America; breeds from eastern Nebraska, northern New York, and Nova Scotia northward, and south ward along the Alleghanies to Pennsylvania. Winters in the tropics." -- Chapman. Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant.
Since Audubon met with but one of these birds in his incessant trampings, and Wilson secured only an immature, imperfectly marked specimen for his collection, the novice may feel no disappointment if he fails to make the acquaintance of this "gay and agreeable widow." And yet the shy and wary bird is not unknown in Central Park, New York City. Even where its clear, whistled song strikes the ear with a startling y that invites to instant pursuit of the singer, you may look long and diligently through the undergrowth without finding it. Dr. Merriam says the whistle resembles the syllables "true, true, true, tru, too, the voice rising on the first three syllables and falling on the last two." In the nesting season this song is repeated over and over again with a persistency worthy of a Kentucky warbler. It is delivered from a perch within a few feet of the ground, as high as the bird seems ever inclined to ascend.
NASHVILLE WARBLER (Helminthophila ruficapilla) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. About an inch and a half smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Olive-green above; yellow underneath. Slate-gray head and neck. Partially concealed chestnut patch on crown. Wings and tail olive-brown and without markings. Female -- Dull olive and paler, with brownish wash underneath. Range -- North America, westward to the plains; north to the Fur Countries, and south to Central America and Mexico. Nests north of Illinois and northern New England; winters in tropics. Migrations -- April. September or October.
It must not be thought that this beautiful warbler confines itself to backyards in the city of Nashville simply because Wilson discovered it near there and gave it a local name, for the bird's actual range reaches from the fur trader's camp near Hudson Bay to the adobe villages of Mexico and Central America, and over two thousand miles east and west in the United States. It chooses open rather than dense woods and tree-bordered fields. It seems to have a liking for hemlocks and pine trees, especially if near a stream that attracts insects to its shores; and Dr. Warren notes that in Pennsylvania he finds small flocks of these warblers in the autumn migration, feeding in the willowy trees near little rivers and ponds. Only in the northern parts of the United States is their nest ever found, for the northern British provinces are their preferred nesting ground. One seen in the White Mountains was built on a mossy, rocky edge, directly on the ground at the foot of a pine tree, and made of rootlets, moss, needles from the trees overhead, and several layers of leaves outside, with a lining of fine grasses that cradled four white, speckled eggs.
Audubon likened the bird's feeble note to the breaking of twigs.
PINE WARBLER (Dendroica vigorsii) Wood Warbler family
Called also: PINE-CREEPING WARBLER
Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. A trifle smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Yellowish olive above; clear yellow below, shading to grayish white, with obscure dark streaks on side of breast. Two whitish wing-bars; two outer tail feathers partly white. Female -- Duller; grayish white only faintly tinged with yellow underneath. Range -- North America, east of the Rockies; north to Manitoba, And south to Florida and the Bahamas. Winters from southern Illinois southward. Migrations -- March or April. October or later. Common summer resident.
The pine warbler closely presses the myrtle warbler for the first place in the ranks of the family migrants, but as the latter bird often stays north all winter, it is usually given the palm. Here is a warbler, let it be recorded, that is fittingly named, for it is a denizen of pine woods only; most common in the long stretches of pine forests at the south and in New York and New England, and correspondingly uncommon wherever the woodsman's axe has laid the pine trees low throughout its range. Its "simple, sweet, and drowsy song," writes Mr. Parkhurst, is always associated "with the smell of pines on a sultry day." It recalls that of the junco and the social sparrow or chippy.
Creeping over the bark of trees and peering into every crevice like a nuthatch; running along the limbs, not often hopping nervously or flitting like the warblers; darting into the air for a passing insect, or descending to the ground to feed on seeds and berries, the pine warbler has, by a curious combination, the movements that seem to characterize several different birds.
It is one of the largest and hardiest members of its family, but not remarkable for its beauty. It is a sociable traveller, cheerfully escorting other warblers northward, and welcoming to its band both the yellow redpolls and the myrtle warblers. These birds are very often seen together in the pine and other evergreen trees in our lawns and in the large city parks.
PRAIRIE WARBLER (Dendroica discolor) Wood Warbler family
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. About an inch and a half shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Olive-green above, shading to yellowish on the head, and with brick-red spots on back between the shoulders. A yellow line over the eye; wing-bars and all under parts bright yellow, heavily streaked with black on the sides. Line through the eye and crescent below it, black. Much white in outer tail feathers. Female -- Paler; upper parts more grayish olive, and markings Less distinct than male's. Range -- Eastern half of the United States. Nests as far north as New England and Michigan. Winters from Florida southward. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.
Doubtless this diminutive bird was given its name because it prefers open country rather than the woods -- the scrubby undergrowth of oaks, young evergreens, and bushes that border clearings being as good a place as any to look for it, and not the wind-swept, treeless tracts of the wild West. Its range is southerly. The Southern and Middle States are where it is most abundant. Here is a wood warbler that is not a bird of the woods -- less so, in fact, than either the summer yellowbird (yellow warbler) or the palm warbler, that are eminently neighborly and fond of pasture lands and ride thickets. But the prairie warblers are rather more retiring little sprites than their cousins, and it is not often we get a close enough view of them to note the brick-red spots on their backs, which are their distinguishing marks. They have a most unkind preference for briery bushes, that discourage human intimacy. In such forbidding retreats they build their nest of plant-fibre, rootlets, and twigs, lined with plant-down and hair.
The song of an individual prairie warbler makes only a slight impression. It consists "of a series of six or seven quickly repeated tees, the next to the last one being the highest" (Chapman). But the united voices of a dozen or more of these pretty little birds, that often sing together, afford something approaching a musical treat.
WILSON'S WARBLER (Sylvania pusila) Wood Warbler family
Called also: BLACKCAP; GREEN BLACK-CAPPED WARBLER; WILSON'S FLYCATCHER
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. About an inch and a half shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Black cap; yellow forehead; all other upper parts olive-green; rich yellow underneath. Female -- Lacks the black cap. Range -- North America, from Alaska and Nova Scotia to Panama. Winters south of Gulf States. Nests chiefly north of the United States. Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant.
To see this strikingly marked little bird one must be on the sharp lookout for it during the latter half of May, or at the season of apple bloom, and the early part of September. It passes northward with an almost scornful rapidity. Audubon mentions having seen it in Maine at the end of October, but this specimen surely must have been an exceptional laggard.
In common with several others of its family, it is exceedingly expert in catching insects on the wing; but it may be known as no true flycatcher from the conspicuous rich yellow of its under parts, and also from its habit of returning from a midair sally to a different perch from the one it left to pursue its dinner. A true flycatcher usually returns to its old perch after each hunt.
To indulge in this aerial chase with success, these warblers select for their home and hunting ground some low woodland growth where a sluggish stream attracts myriads of insects to the boggy neighborhood. Here they build their nest in low bushes or upon the ground. Four or five grayish eggs, sprinkled with cinnamon-colored spots in a circle around the larger end, are laid in the grassy cradle in June. Mr. H. D. Minot found one of these nests on Pike's Peak at an altitude of 11,000 feet, almost at the limit of vegetation. The same authority compares the bird's song to that of the redstart and the yellow warbler.
YELLOW REDPOLL WARBLER (Dendroica palmarum hypochrysea) Wood Warbler family
Called also: YELLOW PALM WARBLER; [the two former palm warbler species combined as PALM WARBLER, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5.5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Chestnut crown. Upper parts brownish olive; greenest on lower back. Underneath uniform bright yellow, streaked with chestnut on throat, breast, and sides. Yellow line over and around the eye. Wings unmarked. Tail edged with olive-green; a few white spots near tips of outer quills. More brownish above in autumn, and with a grayish wash over the yellow under parts. Range -- Eastern parts of North America. Nests from Nova Scotia northward. Winters in the Gulf States. Migrations -- April. October. Spring and autumn migrant.
While the uniform yellow of this warbler's under parts in any plumage is its distinguishing mark, it also has a flycatcher's trait of constantly flirting its tail, that is at once an outlet for its superabundant vivacity and a fairly reliable aid to identification. The tail is jerked, wagged, and flirted like a baton in the hands of an inexperienced leader of an orchestra. One need not go to the woods to look for the restless little sprite that comes northward when the early April foliage is as yellow and green as its feathers. It prefers the fields and rides, and before there are leaves enough on the undergrowth to conceal it we may come to know it as well as it is possible to know any bird whose home life is passed so far away. Usually it is the first warbler one sees in the spring in New York and New England. With all the alertness of a flycatcher, it will dart into the air after insects that fly near the ground, keeping up a constant chip, chip, fine and shrill, at one end of the small body, and the liveliest sort of tail motions at the other. The pine warbler often bears it company.
With the first suspicion of warm weather, off goes this hardy little fellow that apparently loves the cold almost well enough to stay north all the year like its cousin, the myrtle warbler. It builds a particularly deep nest, of the usual warbler construction, on the ground, but its eggs are rosy rather than the bluish white of others.
In the Southern States the bird becomes particularly neighborly, and is said to enter the streets and gardens of towns with a chippy's familiarity.
Palm Warbler or Redpoll Warbler (Dendroica palmarum) differs from the preceding chiefly in its slightly smaller size, the more grayish-brown tint in its olive upper parts, and the uneven shade of yellow underneath that varies from clear yellow to soiled whitish. It is the Western counterpart of the yellow redpoll, and is most common in the Mississippi Valley. Strangely enough, however, it is this warbler, and not hypochrysea, that goes out of its way to winter in Florida, where it is abundant all winter.
YELLOW WARBLER (Dendroica aestiva) Wood Warbler family
Called also: SUMMER YELLOWBIRD; GOLDEN WARBLER; YELLOW POLL
Length -- 4.75 to 5.2 inches. Over an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Upper parts olive-yellow, brightest on the crown; under parts bright yellow, streaked with reddish brown. Wings and tail dusky olive-brown, edged with yellow. Female -- Similar; but reddish-brown streakings less distinct. Range -- North America, except Southwestern States, where the prothonotary warbler reigns in its stead. Nests from Gulf States to Fur Countries. Winters south of the Gulf States. As far as northern parts of South America. Migrations -- May. September. Common summer resident.
This exquisite little creature of perpetual summer (though to find it it must travel back and forth between two continents) comes out of the south with the golden days of spring. From much living in the sunshine through countless generations, its feathers have finally become the color of sunshine itself, and in disposition, as well, it is nothing if not sunny and bright. Not the least of its attractions is that it is exceedingly common everywhere: in the shrubbery of our lawns, in gardens and orchards, by the rand brookside, in the edges of woods -- everywhere we catch its glint of brightness through the long summer days, and hear its simple, sweet, and happy song until the end of July.
Because both birds are so conspicuously yellow, no doubt this warbler is quite generally confused with the goldfinch; but their distinctions are clear enough to any but the most superficial glance. In the first place, the yellow warbler is a smaller bird than the goldfinch; it has neither black crown, wings, nor tail, and it does have reddish-brown streaks on its breast that are sufficiently obsolete to make the coloring of that part look simply dull at a little distance. The goldfinch's bill is heavy, in order that it may crack seeds, whereas the yellow warbler's is slender, to enable it to pick minute insects from the foliage. The goldfinch's wavy, curved flight is unique, and that of his "double" differs not a whit from that of all nervous, flitting warblers. Surely no one familiar with the rich, full, canary-like song of the "wild canary," as the goldfinch is called, could confuse it with the mild "Weechee, chee, cher-wee" of the summer yellowbird. Another distinction, not always infallible, but nearly so, is that when seen feeding, the goldfinch is generally below the line of vision, while the yellow warbler is either on it or not far above it, as it rarely goes over twelve feet from the ground.
No doubt, the particularly mild, sweet amiability of the yellow warbler is responsible for the persistent visitations of the cowbird, from which it is a conspicuous sufferer. In the exquisite, neat little matted cradle of glistening milk-weed flax, lined with down from the fronds of fern, the skulking housebreaker deposits her surreptitious egg for the little yellow mother-bird to hatch and tend. But amiability is not the only prominent trait in the female yellow warbler's character. She is clever as well, and quickly builds a new bottom on her nest, thus sealing up the cowbird's egg, and depositing her own on the soft, spongy floor above it. This operation has been known to be twice repeated, until the nest became three stories high, when a persistent cowbird made such unusual architecture necessary.
The most common nesting place of the yellow warbler is in low willows along the shores of streams.
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT (Icteria virens) Wood Warbler family
Called also: POLYGLOT CHAT; YELLOW MOCKING BIRD
Length -- 7.5 inches. A trifle over an inch longer than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Uniform olive-green above. Throat, breast, and under side of wings bright, clear yellow. Underneath white. Sides grayish. White line over the eye, reaching to base of bill and forming partial eye-ring. Also white line on sides of throat. Bill and feet black. Range -- North America, from Ontario to Central America and westward to the plains. Most common in Middle Atlantic States. Migrations -- Early May. Late August or September. Summer resident.
This largest of the warblers might be mistaken for a dozen birds collectively in as many minutes; but when it is known that the jumble of whistles, parts of songs, chuckles, clucks, barks, quacks, whines, and wails proceed from a single throat, the yellow-breasted chat becomes a marked specimen forthwith -- a conspicuous individual never to be confused with any other member of the feathered tribe. It is indeed absolutely unique. The catbird and the mocking-bird are rare mimics; but while the chat is not their equal in this respect, it has a large repertoire of weird, uncanny cries all its own -- a power of throwing its voice, like a human ventriloquist, into unexpected corners of the thicket or meadow. In addition to its extraordinary vocal feats, it can turn somersaults and do other clown-like stunts as well as any variety actor on the Bowery stage.
Only by creeping cautiously towards the ride tangle, where this "rollicking polyglot" is entertaining himself and his mate, brooding over her speckled eggs in a bulky nest set in a most inaccessible briery part of the thicket, can you hope to hear him rattle through his variety performance. Walk boldly or noisily past his retreat, and there is "silence there and nothing more." But two very bright eyes peer out at you through the undergrowth, where the trim, elegant-looking bird watches you with quizzical suspicion until you quietly seat yourself assume silent indifference. "Whew, whew!" he begins, and then immediately, with evident intent to amuse, he rattles off an indescribable, eccentric medley until your ears are tired listening. With bill uplifted, tail drooping, wings fluttering at his side, he cuts an absurd figure enough, but not so comical as when he rises into the air, trailing his legs behind him stork-fashion. This surely is the clown among birds. But any though he is, he is as capable of devotion to his Columbine as Punchinello, and remains faithfully mated year after year. However much of a tease and a deceiver he may be to the passer-by along the ride, in the privacy of the domestic circle he shows truly lovable traits.
He has the habit of singing in his unmusical way on moonlight nights. Probably his ventriloquial powers are cultivated not for popular entertainment, but to lure intruders away from his nest.
MARYLAND YELLOWTHROAT (Geothlypis trichas) Wood Warbler family
Called also: BLACK-MASKED GROUND WARBLER; [COMMON YELLOWTHROAT, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5.33 inches. Just an inch shorter than the typical English sparrow. Male -- Olive-gray on head, shading to olive-green on all the other upper parts. Forehead, cheeks, and sides of head black, like a mask, and bordered behind by a grayish line. Throat and breast bright yellow, growing steadily paler underneath. Female -- Either totally lacks black mask or its place is Indicated by only a dusky tint. She is smaller and duller. Range -- Eastern North America, west to the plains; most common east of the Alleghanies. Nests from the Gulf States to Labrador and Manitoba; winters south of Gulf States to Panama. Migrations -- May. September. Common summer resident.
"Given a piece of marshy ground with an abundance of skunk cabbage and a fairly dense growth of saplings, and near by a tangle of green brier and blackberry, and you will be pretty sure to have it tenanted by a pair of yellowthroats," says Dr. Abbott, who found several of their nests in skunk-cabbage plants, which he says are favorite cradles. No animal cares to touch this plant if it can be avoided; but have the birds themselves no sense of smell?
Before and after the nesting season these active birds, plump of form, elegant of attire, forceful, but not bold, enter the scrubby pastures near our houses and the shrubbery of old- fashioned, overgrown gardens, and peer out at the human wanderer therein with a charming curiosity. The bright eyes of the male masquerader shine through his black mask, where he intently watches you from the tangle of syringa and snowball bushes; and as he flies into the laburnum with its golden chain of blossoms that pale before the yellow of his throat and breast, you are so impressed with his grace and elegance that you follow too audaciously, he thinks, and off he goes. And yet this is a bird that seems to delight in being pursued. It never goes so far away that you are not tempted to follow it, though it be through dense undergrowth and swampy thickets, and it always gives you just glimpse enough of its beauties and graces before it flies ahead, to invite the hope of a closer inspection next time. When it dives into the deepest part of the tangle, where you can imagine it hunting about among the roots and fallen leaves for the larvae, caterpillars, spiders, and other insects on which it feeds, it sometimes amuses itself with a simple little song between the hunts. But the bird's indifference, you feel sure, arises from preoccupation rather than rudeness.
If, however, your visit to the undergrowth is unfortunately timed and there happens to be a bulky nest in process of construction on the ground, a quickly repeated, vigorous chit, pit, quit, impatiently inquires the reason for your bold intrusion. Withdraw discreetly and listen to the love-song that is presently poured out to reassure his plain little maskless mate. The music is delivered with all the force and energy of his vigorous nature and penetrates to a surprising distance. "Follow me, follow me, follow me," many people hear him say; others write the syllables, "Wichity, wichity, wichity, wichity"; and still others write them, "I beseech you, I beseech you, I beseech you," though the tones of this self-assertive bird rather command than entreat. Mr. Frank Chapman says of the yellowthroats: "They sing throughout the summer, and in August add a flight-song to their repertoire. This is usually uttered toward evening, when the bird springs several feet into the air, hovers for a second, and then drops back to the bushes."
BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER (Dendroica blackburnia) Wood Warbler family
Called also: HEMLOCK WARBLER; ORANGE-THROATED WARBLER; TORCH-BIRD
Length -- 4.5 to 5.5 inches. An inch and a half smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Head black, striped with orange-flame; throat and breast orange, shading through yellow to white underneath; wings, tail, and part of back black, with white markings. Female -- Olive-brown above, shading into yellow on breast, and paler under parts. Range -- Eastern North America to plains. Winters in tropics. Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant.
"The orange-throated warbler would seem to be his right name, his characteristic cognomen," says John Burroughs, in ever-delightful "Wake Robin"; "but no, he is doomed to wear the name of some discoverer, perhaps the first who robbed his nest or rifled him of his mate -- Blackburn; hence, Blackburnian warbler. The burn seems appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the redstart, but not especially musical."
No foliage is dense enough to hide, and no autumnal tint too brilliant to outshine this luminous little bird that in May, as it migrates northward to its nesting ground, darts in and out of the leafy shadows like a tongue of fire.
It is by far the most glorious of all the warblers -- a sort of diminutive oriole. The quiet-colored little mate flits about after him, apparently lost in admiration of his fine feathers and the ease with which his thin tenor voice can end his lover's warble in a high Z.
Take a good look at this attractive couple, for in May they leave us to build a nest of bark and moss in the evergreens of Canada -- that paradise for warblers -- or of the Catskills and Adirondacks, and in autumn they hurry south to escape the first frosts.
REDSTART (Setophaga ruticilla) Wood Warbler family
Called also: YELLOW-TAILED WARBLER; [AMERICAN REDSTART, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. Male -- In spring plumage: Head, neck, back, and middle breast glossy black, with blue reflections. Breast and underneath white, slightly flushed with salmon, increasing to bright salmon-orange on the sides of the body and on the wing linings. Occasional specimens show orange-red. Tail feathers partly black, partly orange, with brblack band across the end. Orange markings on wings. Bill and feet black. In autumn: Fading into rusty black, olive, and yellow. Female -- Olive-brown, and yellow where the male is orange. Young browner than the females. Range -- North America to upper Canada. West occasionally, as far as the Pacific coast, but commonly found in summer in the Atlantic and Middle States. Migrations -- Early May. End of September. Summer resident.
Late some evening, early in May, when one by one the birds have withdrawn their voices from the vesper chorus, listen for the lingering "'tsee, 'tsee, 'tseet" (usually twelve times repeated in a minute), that the redstart sweetly but rather monotonously sings from the evergreens, where, as his tiny body burns in the twilight, Mrs. Wright likens him to a "wind-blown firebrand, half glowing, half charred."
But by daylight this brilliant little warbler is constantly on the alert. It is true he has the habit, like the flycatchers (among which some learned ornithologists still class him), of sitting pensively on a branch, with fluffy feathers and drooping wings; but the very next instant he shows true warbler blood by making a sudden dash upward, then downward through the air, tumbling somersaults, as if blown by the wind, flitting from branch to branch, busily snapping at the tiny insects hidden beneath the leaves, clinging to the tree-trunk like a creeper, and singing between bites.
Possibly he will stop long enough in his mad chase to open and shut his tail, fan-fashion, with a dainty egotism that, in the peacock, becomes rank vanity.
The Germans call this little bird roth Stert (red tail), but, like so many popular names, this is a misnomer, as, strictly speaking, the redstart is never red, though its salmon-orange markings often border on to orange-flame.
In a fork of some tall bush or tree, placed ten or fifteen feet from the ground, a carefully constructed little nest is made of moss, horsehair, and strippings from the bark, against which the nest is built, the better to conceal its location. Four or five whitish eggs, thickly sprinkled with pale brown and lilac, like the other warblers', are too jealously guarded by the little mother-bird to be very often seen.
BALTIMORE ORIOLE (Iderus galbula) Oriole and Blackbird family
Called also: GOLDEN ORIOLE;FIREBIRD; GOLDEN ROBIN; HANG-NEST; ENGLISH ROBIN
Length -- 7 to 8 inches. About one-fifth smaller than the robin. Male -- Head, throat, upper part of back glossy black. Wings black, with white spots and edgings. Tail-quills black, with yellow markings on the tips. Everywhere else orange, shading into flame. Female -- Yellowish olive. Wings dark brown, and quills margined with white. Tail yellowish brown, with obscure, dusky bars. Range -- The whole United States. Most numerous in Eastern States below 55 degrees north latitude. Migrations -- Early May. Middle of September. Common summer resident.
A flash of fire through the air; a rich, high, whistled song floating in the wake of the feathered meteor: the Baltimore oriole cannot be mistaken. When the orchards are in blossom he arrives in full plumage and song, and awaits the coming of the female birds, that travel northward more leisurely in flocks. He is decidedly in evidence. No foliage is dense enough to hide his brilliancy; his temper, quite as fiery as his feathers, leads him into noisy quarrels, and his insistent song with its martial, interrogative notes becomes almost tiresome until he is happily mated and family cares check his enthusiasm.
Among the best architects in the world is his plain but energetic mate. Gracefully swung from a high branch of some tall tree, the nest is woven with exquisite skill into a long, flexible pouch that rain cannot penetrate, nor wind shake from its horsehair moorings. Bits of string, threads of silk, and sometimes yarn of the gayest colors, if laid about the shrubbery in the garden, will be quickly interwoven with the shreds of bark and milkweed stalks that the bird has found afield. The shape of the nest often differs, because in unsettled regions, where hawks abound, it is necessary to make it deeper than seven inches (the customary depth when it is built near the homes of men), and to partly close it at the top to conceal the sitting bird. From four to six whitish eggs, scrawled over with black-brown, are hatched by the mother oriole, and most jealously guarded by her now truly domesticated mate.
The number of grubs, worms, flies, caterpillars, and even cocoons, that go to satisfy the hunger of a family of orioles in a day, might indicate, if it could be computed, the great value these birds are about our homes, aside from the good cheer they bring.
There is a popular tradition about the naming of this gorgeous bird: When George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, worn out and discouraged by various hardships in his Newfoundland colony, decided to visit Virginia in 1628, he wrote that nothing in the Chesapeake country so impressed him as the myriads of birds in its woods. But the song and color of the oriole particularly cheered and delighted him, and orange and black became the heraldic colors of the first lords proprietors of Maryland.
Hush! 'tis he! My Oriole, my glance of summer fire, Is come at last; and ever on the watch, Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound About the bough to help his housekeeping. Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck, Yet fearing me who laid it in his way. Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, Divines the Providence that hides and helps. Heave, ho! Heave, ho! he whistles as the twine Slackens its hold; once more, now! and a flash Lightens across the sunlight to the elm Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. -- James Russell Lowell.
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