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 load driven 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.