(_Dendroica cA|rulescens_) Wood Warbler family
_Length_---5.30 inches. About an inch shorter than the English
sparrow.
_Male_--Slate-color, not blue above; lightest on forehead and
darkest on lower back. Wings and tail edged with bluish.
Cheeks, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides black. Breast
and underneath white. White spots on wings, and a little white
on tail.
_Female_--Olive-green above; underneath soiled yellow. Wing-spots
inconspicuous. Tail generally has a faint bluish tinge.
_Range_--Eastern North America, from Labrador to tropics,
where it winters.
_Migrations_--May. September. Usually a migrant only in the
United States.
Whoever looks for this beautifully marked warbler among the bluebirds,
will wish that the man who named him had possessed a truer eye for
color. But if the name so illy fits the bright slate-colored male, how
grieved must be his little olive-and-yellow mate to answer to the name
of black-throated blue warbler when she has neither a black throat nor
a blue feather! It is not easy to distinguish her as she flits about
the twigs and leaves of the garden in May or early autumn, except as
she is seen in company with her husband, whose name she has taken with
him for better or for worse. The white spot on the wings should always
be looked for to positively identify this bird.
Before flying up to a twig to peck off the insects, the birds have a
pretty vireo trick of cocking their heads on one side to investigate
the quantity hidden underneath the leaves. They seem less nervous and
more deliberate than many of their restless family.
Most warblers go over the Canada border to nest, but there are many
records of the nests of this species in the Alleghanies as far south
as Georgia, in the Catskills, in Connecticut, northern Minnesota and
Michigan. Laurel thickets and moist undergrowth of woods in the United
States, and more commonly pine woods in Canada, are the favorite
nesting haunts. A sharp _zip_, _zip_, like some midsummer insect's
noise, is the bird's call-note, but its love-song, _zee_, _zee_,
_zee_, or _twee_, _twea_, _twea-e-e_, as one authority writes it, is
only rarely heard in the migrations. It is a languid, drawling little
strain, with an upward slide that is easily drowned in the full bird
chorus of May.