Called also: YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER [AOU 1998]; MYRTLE BIRD;
YELLOW-CROWNED WARBLER
Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. About an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- In summer plumage: A yellow patch on top of head, lower
back, and either side of the breast. Upper parts bluish slate,
streaked with black. Upper breast black; throat white; all
other under parts whitish, streaked with black. Two white wing
bars, and tail quills have white spots near the tip. In winter:
Upper parts olive-brown, streaked with black; the yellow spot
on lower back the only yellow mark remaining. Wing-bars
grayish.
Female -- Resembles male in winter plumage.
Range -- Eastern North America. Occasional on Pacific slope.
Summers from Minnesota and northern New England northward to
Fur Countries. Winters from Middle States south ward into
Central America; a few often remaining at the northern United
States all the winter.
Migrations -- April. October. November. Also, but more rarely, a
winter resident.
The first of the warblers to arrive in the spring and the last to leave us in
the autumn, some even remaining throughout the northern winter, the myrtle
warbler, next to the summer yellowbird, is the most familiar of its
multitudinous kin. Though we become acquainted with it chiefly in the
migrations, it impresses us by its numbers rather than by any gorgeousness of
attire. The four yellow spots on crown, lower back, and sides are its
distinguishing marks; and in the autumn these marks have dwindled to only one,
that on the lower back or rump. The great difficulty experienced in
identifying any warbler is in its restless habit of flitting about.
For a few days in early May we are forcibly reminded of the Florida peninsula,
which fairly teems with these birds; they become almost superabundant, a
distraction during the precious days when the rarer species are quietly
slipping by, not to return again for a year, perhaps longer, for some warblers
are notoriously irregular in their routes north and south, and never return by
the way they travelled in the spring.
But if we look sharply into every group of myrtle warblers, we are quite
likely to discover some of their dainty, fragile cousins that gladly seek the
escort of birds so fearless as they. By the last of May all the warblers are
gone from the neighborhood except the constant little summer yellowbird and
redstart.
In autumn, when the myrtle warblers return after a busy enough summer passed
in Canadian nurseries, they chiefly haunt those regions where juniper and
bay-berries abound. These latter (Myrica cerifera), or the myrtle wax-berries,
as they are sometimes called, and which are the bird's favorite food, have
given it their name. Wherever the supply of these berries is sufficient to
last through the winter, there it may be found foraging in the scrubby bushes.
Sometimes driven by cold and hunger from the fields, this hardiest member of a
family that properly belongs to the tropics, seeks shelter and food close to
the outbuildings on the farm.