(_Geothlypis trichas occidentalis._)
The birds are here, for all the season's late.
They take the sun's height, an' don' never wait;
Soon's he officially declares it's spring,
Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing,
An' th' aint an acre, fur ez you can hear,
Can't by the music tell the time o' year.--_Lowell._
This common, but beautiful resident of the western United States begins
to arrive about the middle of April and leaves during the month of
September. It is one of the most conspicuous of the warbler family, is
very numerous and familiar, and is decked with such a marked plumage
that it cannot fail to be noticed. The adult male is olive-green
above, becoming browner on the nape. The female is duller in color
than the male without black, gray, or white on head, which is mostly
dull brownish. The yellow of throat is much duller than in the male.
The young are somewhat like the adult female. This is said to be the
prevailing form in Illinois and Indiana, the larger number of specimens
having the more extensively yellow lower parts of the western form,
though there is much variation.
This little fellow is found among the briars or weed-stalks, in rose
bushes and brambles, where it sings throughout the day. Its nest,
generally built between upright weed-stalks or coarse grass in damp
meadow land, is shaped like a cup, the opening at the top. The eggs
vary from four to six, and are of a delicate pinkish-white, the larger
end marked by a ring of specks and lines of different shades of brown.
The western yellow-throat inhabits the Mississippi valley to the
Pacific coast. It is found as far north as Manitoba; south in winter
from the southern United States, through central and western Mexico to
Guatemala. With a few exceptions the warblers are migratory birds, the
majority of them passing rapidly across the United States in the spring
on the way to the northern breeding-grounds. It is for this reason that
they are known to few except the close observers of bird life, though
in season they are known to literally swarm where their insect food is
most plentiful--"always where the green leaves are, whether in lofty
tree-top, by an embowered coppice, or budding orchard. When the apple
trees bloom the warblers revel among the flowers, vying in activity
and numbers with the bees; now probing the recesses of a blossom for
an insect which has effected lodgment there, then darting to another,
where, poised daintily upon a slender twig, or suspended from it, he
explores, hastily, but carefully for another morsel. Every movement is
the personification of nervous activity, as if the time for the journey
was short; and, indeed, such appears to be the case, for two or three
days, at most, suffice some species in a single locality; a day spent
in gleaning through the woods and orchards of one neighborhood, with
occasional brief siestas among the leafy bowers, then the following
night in continuous flight toward its northern destination, is probably
the history of every individual of the moving throng."