(_Mniotilta varia_) Wood Warbler family
_Called also_: VARIED CREEPING WARBLER; BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPER;
WHITEPOLL WARBLER
_Length_--5 to 5.5 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 flittings 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.