(_Geothlypis formosa_) Wood Warbler family
_Length_--5.5 inches. Nearly an inch shorter than the English
sparrow.
_Male_--Upper parts olive-green; under parts yellow; a yellow
line from the bill passes over and around the eye. Crown of
head, patch below the eye, and line defining throat, black.
_Female_--Similar, but paler, and with grayish instead of
black markings.
_Range_--United States eastward from the Rockies, and from
Iowa and Connecticut to Central America, where it winters.
_Migrations_--May. September. Summer resident.
No bird is common at the extreme limits of its range, and so this
warbler has a reputation for rarity among the New England
ornithologists that would surprise people in the middle South and
Southwest. After all that may be said in the books, a bird is either
common or rare to the individual who may or may not have happened to
become acquainted with it in any part of its chosen territory. Plenty
of people in Kentucky, where we might judge from its name this bird is
supposed to be most numerous, have never seen or heard of it, while a
student on the Hudson River, within sight of New York, knows it
intimately. It also nests regularly in certain parts of the
Connecticut Valley. "Who is my neighbor?" is often a question
difficult indeed to answer where birds are concerned. In the chapter,
"Spring at the Capital," which, with every reading of "Wake Robin,"
inspires the bird-lover with fresh zeal, Mr. Burroughs writes of the
Kentucky warbler: "I meet with him in low, damp places, in the woods,
usually on the steep sides of some little run. I hear at intervals a
clear, strong, bell-like whistle or warble, and presently catch a
glimpse of the bird as he jumps up from the ground to take an insect
or worm from the under side of a leaf. This is his characteristic
movement. He belongs to the class of ground warblers, and his range is
very low, indeed lower than that of any other species with which I am
acquainted."
Like the ovenbird and comparatively few others, for most birds hop
over the ground, the Kentucky warbler _walks_ rapidly about, looking
for insects under the fallen leaves, and poking his inquisitive beak
into every cranny where a spider may be lurking. The bird has a
pretty, conscious way of flying up to a perch, a few feet above the
ground, as a tenor might advance towards the footlights of a stage, to
pour forth his clear, penetrating whistle, that in the nesting season
especially is repeated over and over again with tireless persistency.