(_Helminthophila chrysoptera_) Wood Warbler family
_Length_--About 5 inches. More than an inch shorter than the
English sparrow.
_Male_--Yellow crown and yellow patches on the wings. Upper
parts bluish gray, sometimes tinged with greenish. Stripe
through the eye and throat black. Sides of head, chin, and
line over the eye white. Underneath white, grayish on sides. A
few white markings on outer tail feathers.
_Female_--Crown duller; gray where male is black, with olive
upper parts and grayer underneath.
_Range_--From Canadian border to Central America, where it winters.
_Migrations_--May. September. Summer resident.
After one has seen a golden-winged warbler fluttering hither and
thither about the shrubbery of a park within sight and sound of a
great city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all,
partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before
one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been
taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow
wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden
patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are
scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather
misleading name he bears. But, then, most warblers' names are
misleading. They serve their best purpose in cultivating patience and
other gentle virtues in the novice.
Such habits and choice of haunts as characterize the blue-winged
warbler are also the golden-winged's. But their voices are quite
different, the former's being sharp and metallic, while the latter's
_zee, zee, zee_ comes more lazily and without accent.