(_Dendroica palmarum hypochrysea_) Wood Warbler family
_Called also_: YELLOW PALM WARBLER
_Length_--5.5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the
English sparrow.
_Male and Female_--Chestnut crown. Upper parts brownish olive;
greenest on lower back. Underneath uniform bright yellow,
streaked with chestnut on throat, breast, and sides. Yellow
line over and around the eye. Wings unmarked. Tail edged with
olive-green; a few white spots near tips of outer quills. More
brownish above in autumn, and with a grayish wash over the
yellow under parts.
_Range_--Eastern parts of North America. Nests from Nova
Scotia northward. Winters in the Gulf States.
_Migrations_--April. October. Spring and autumn migrant.
While the uniform yellow of this warbler's under parts in any plumage
is its distinguishing mark, it also has a flycatcher's trait of
constantly flirting its tail, that is at once an outlet for its
superabundant vivacity and a fairly reliable aid to identification.
The tail is jerked, wagged, and flirted like a baton in the hands of
an inexperienced leader of an orchestra. One need not go to the woods
to look for the restless little sprite that comes northward when the
early April foliage is as yellow and green as its feathers. It prefers
the fields and roadsides, and before there are leaves enough on the
undergrowth to conceal it we may come to know it as well as it is
possible to know any bird whose home life is passed so far away.
Usually it is the first warbler one sees in the spring in New York and
New England. With all the alertness of a flycatcher, it will dart into
the air after insects that fly near the ground, keeping up a constant
_chip, chip_, fine and shrill, at one end of the small body, and the
liveliest sort of tail motions at the other. The pine warbler often
bears it company.
With the first suspicion of warm weather, off goes this hardy little
fellow that apparently loves the cold almost well enough to stay north
all the year like its cousin, the myrtle warbler. It builds a
particularly deep nest, of the usual warbler construction, on the
ground, but its eggs are rosy rather than the bluish white of others.
In the Southern States the bird becomes particularly neighborly, and
is said to enter the streets and gardens of towns with a chippy's
familiarity.
* * * * *
Palm Warbler or Redpoll Warbler (_Dendroica palmarum_) differs from
the preceding chiefly in its slightly smaller size, the more
grayish-brown tint in its olive upper parts, and the uneven shade of
yellow underneath that varies from clear yellow to soiled whitish. It
is the Western counterpart of the yellow redpoll, and is most common
in the Mississippi Valley. Strangely enough, however, it is this
warbler, and not _hypochrysea_, that goes out of its way to winter in
Florida, where it is abundant all winter.