Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Black cap; cheeks and beneath grayish white, forming a
sort of collar, more or less distinct. Upper parts striped
gray, black, and olive. Breast and under parts white, with
black streaks. Tail olive-brown, with yellow-white spots.
Female -- Without cap. Greenish-olive above, faintly streaked
with black. Paler than male. Bands on wings, yellowish.
Range -- North America, to Greenland and Alaska. In winter, to
northern part of South America.
Migrations -- Last of May. Late October.
A faint "screep, screep," like "the noise made by striking two pebbles
together," Audubon says, is often the only indication of the blackpoll's
presence; but surely that tireless bird-student had heard its more
characteristic notes, which, rapidly uttered, increasing in the middle of the
strain and diminishing toward the end, suggest the shrill, wiry burn of some
midsummer insect. After the opera-glass has searched him out we find him by no
means an inconspicuous bird. A dainty little fellow, with a glossy black cap
pulled over his eyes, he is almost hidden by the dense foliage on the trees by
the time he returns to us at the very end of spring. Giraud says that he is
the very last of his tribe to come north, though the bay-breasted warbler has
usually been thought the bird to wind up the spring procession.
The blackpoll has a certain characteristic motion that distinguishes him from
the black-and-white creeper, for which a hasty glance might mistake him, and
from the jolly little chickadee with his black cap. Apparently he runs about
the tree-trunk, but in reality he so flits his wings that his feet do not
touch the bark at all; yet so rapidly does he go that the flipping wing-motion
is not observed. He is most often seen in May in the apple trees, peeping into
the opening blossoms for insects, uttering now and then his slender, lisping,
brief song.
Vivacious, a busy hunter, often catching insects on the wing like the
flycatchers, he is a cheerful, useful neighbor the short time he spends with
us before travelling to the far north, where he mates and nests. A nest has
been found on Slide Mountain, in the Catskills, but the hardy evergreens of
Canada, and sometimes those of northern New England, are the chosen home of
this little bird that builds a nest of bits of root, lichens, and sedges,
amply large for a family twice the size of his.
BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER (Mniotilta varia) Wood Warbler
family
Called also: VARIED CREEPING WARBLER; BLACK-AND WHITE CREEPER;
WHITEPOLL WARBLER; [BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5 to inches. About an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Upper parts white, varied with black. A white stripe
along the summit of the head and back of the neck, edged
with black. White line above and below the eye. Black cheeks
and throat, grayish in females and young. Breast white in
middle, with black stripes on sides. Wings and tail rusty
black, with two white cross-bars on former, and soiled white
markings on tail quills.
Female -- Paler and less distinct markings throughout.
Range -- Peculiar to America. Eastern United States and westward
to the plains. North as far as the fur countries. Winters in
tropics south of Florida.
Migrations -- April. Late September. Summer resident.
Nine times out of ten this active little warbler is mistaken for the downy
woodpecker, not because of his coloring alone, but also on account of their
common habit of running up and down the trunks of trees and on the under side
of branches, looking for insects, on which all the warblers subsist. But
presently the true warbler characteristic of restless flitting about shows
itself. A woodpecker would go over a tree with painstaking, systematic care,
while the black-and-white warbler, no less intent upon securing its food,
hurries off from tree to tree, wherever the most promising menu is offered.
Clinging to the mottled bark of the tree-trunk, which he so closely resembles,
it would be difficult to find him were it not for these sudden fittings and
the feeble song, "Weachy, weachy, weachy, 'twee, 'twee, 'tweet," he half
lisps, half sings between his dashes after slugs. Very rarely indeed can his
nest be found in an old stump or mossy bank, where bark, leaves. and hair make
the downy cradle for his four or five tiny babies.