:B5

BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW

AND ORANGE

Yellow-throated Vireo

American Goldfinch

Evening Grosbeak

Blue-winged Warbler

Canadian Warbler Hooded Warbler Kentucky Warbler Magnolia Warbler Mourning Warbler Nashville Warbler

Pine Warbler

Prairie Warbler Wilson’s Warbler or Blackcap

Yellow Warbler or Summer Yellowbird

Yellow Redpoll Warbler Yellow-breasted Chat

Maryland Yellowthroat

Blackburnian Warbler

Redstart

Baltimore Oriole

Look also among the Yellowish Olive Birds in the preceding group; and among the Brown Birds for the Meadowlark and Flicker. See also Parula Warbler (Slate) and Yellow-bellied Woodpecker (Black and White).

YELLOW-THROATED VIREO

Life-size.

BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW AND

ORANGE

Yellow-throated Vireo (Vireo flavifrons) Vireo or Greenlet family Length— 5.5 to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female—Lemon-yellow on throat, upper breast; line around the eye and forehead. Yellow, shading into olive-green, on head, back, and shoulders. Underneath white.

Tail dark brownish, edged with white. Wings a lighter shade, with two white bands across, and some quills edged with white. Range—North America, from Newfoundland to Gulf of Mexico, Migrations—May.and westward toSeptember.the Rockies.SpringWintersand inautumnthe tropics.migrant more rarely resident. This is undoubtedly the beauty of the vireo family—a group of neat, active, stoutly built, and vigorous little birds of yellow, greenish, and white plumage; birds that love the trees, and whose feathers reflect the coloring of the leaves they hide, hunt, and nest among. “We have no birds,” says Bradford Torrey, “so unsparing of their music: they sing from morning till night.”

The yellow-throated vireo partakes of all the family characteristics, but, in addition to these, it eclipses all its relatives in the brilliancy of its coloring and in the art of nest-building, which it has brought to a state of hopeless perfection. No envious bird need try to excel the exquisite finish of its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging running water that threatens too precipitous a bath to tempt the young climbers. However common in the city parks and suburban gardens this bird may be during the migrations, it delights in a secluded

189

Conspicuously Yellow and Orange

retreat overgrown with tall trees and near a stream, such as is dear to the solitary vireo as well when the nesting time approaches. High up in the trees we hear its rather sad, persistent strain, that is more in harmony with the dim forest than with the gay flower garden, where, if the truth must be told, its song is both monotonous and depressing. Mr. Bicknell says it is the only vireo that sings as it flies.

American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) Finch family Called also: WILD CANARY; YELLOWBIRD; THISTLE BIRD Length— 5 to 5.2 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male—In simmer plumage Bright yellow, except on crown of head, frontlet, wings, and tail, which are black. Whitish markings on wings give effect of bands. Tail with white on inner webs. In winter plumage Head yellow-olive; no frontlet; back drab, with reddish tinge; shoulders and throat yellow; soiled brownish white underneath. Female—Brownish olive above, yellowish white beneath. Range—North America, from the tropics to the Fur Countries and westward to the Columbia River and California. Common throughout its range. Migrations—May. October. Common summer resident, frequently seen throughout the winter as well.

An old field, overgrown with thistles and tall, stalky wild flowers, is the paradise of the goldfinches, summer or winter. Here they congregate in happy companies while the sunshine and goldenrod are as bright as their feathers, and cling to the swaying, slender stems that furnish an abundant harvest, daintily lunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at the mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michaelmas daisies; or, when snow covers the same field with a glistening crust, above which the brown stalks offer only a meagre dinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in winter feathers, cling to the swaying stems with cheerful fortitude.

At your approach, the busy company rises on the wing, and with peculiar, wavy flight rise and fall through the air, marking

190

Conspicuously Yellow and Orange

each undulation with a cluster -of notes, sweet and clear, that come floating downward from the blue ether, where the birds seem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike.

In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has been drab and brown through the winter months, is moulted or shed a change that transforms the bird from a sombre Puritan into the gayest of cavaliers, and seems to wonderfully exalt his spirits. He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody that might be the outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the bird’s happy heart.

With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, it is small wonder that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and caged, however inferior their song may be to the European species recently introduced into this country. Heard in Central Park, New York, where they were set at liberty, the European goldfinches seemed to sing with more abandon, perhaps, but with no more sweetness than their American cousins. The song remains at its best all through the summer months, for the bird is a long wooer. It is nearly July before he mates, and not until the tardy cedar birds are house-building in the orchard do the happy pair begin to carry grass, moss, and plant-down to a crotch of some tall tree convenient to a field of such wild flowers as will furnish food to a growing family. Doubtless the birds wait for this food to be in proper condition before they undertake parental duties at all—the most plausible excuse for their late nesting. The cares evolving from four to six pale-blue eggs will suffice to quiet the father’s song for the winter by the first of September, and fade all the glory out of his shining coat. As pretty a sight as any garden offers is when a family of goldfinches alights on the top of a sunflower to feast upon the oily seeds— a perfect harmony of brown and gold.

Conspicuously Yellow and Orange

Evening Grosbeak (Coccotbraustes vespertinus) Finch family Length—8 inches. Two inches shorter than the robin. Male—Forehead, shoulders, and underneath clear yellow; dull yellow on lower back; sides of the head, throat, and breast olive-brown. Crown, tail, and wings black, the latter with Female—Brownishwhite secondarygray,feathers.more Billor heavyless suffusedand blunt,withand yellow.yellow.

Wings and tail blackish, with some white feathers. Ra?ige— Interior of North America. Resident from Manitoba northward. Common winter visitor in northwestern United

States and Mississippi Valley; casual winter visitor in northern Atlantic States.

In the winter of 1889-90 Eastern people had the rare treat of becoming acquainted with this common bird of the Northwest, that, in one of its erratic travels, chose to visit New England and the Atlantic States, as far south as Delaware, in great numbers. Those who saw the evening grosbeaks then remember how beautiful their yellow plumage—a rare winter tint—looked in the snow-covered trees, where small companies of the gentle and even tame visitors enjoyed the buds and seeds of the maples, elders, and evergreens. Possibly evening grosbeaks were in vogue for the next season’s millinery, or perhaps Eastern ornithologists had a sudden zeal to investigate their structural anatomy. At any rate, these birds, whose very tameness, that showed slight acquaintance with mankind, should have touched the coldest heart, received the warmest kind of a reception from hot shot. The few birds that escaped to the solitudes of Manitoba could not be expected to tempt other travellers eastward by an account of their visit. The bird is quite likely to remain rare in the East.

But in the Mississippi Valley and throughout the northwest, companies of from six to sixty may be regularly counted upon as winter neighbors on almost every farm. Here the females keep up a busy chatting, like a company of cedar birds, and the males punctuate their pauses with a single shrill note that gives little indication of their vocal powers. But in the solitude of the northern forests the love-song is said to resemble the robin’s at the start. Unhappily, after a most promising beginning, the bird suddenly stops, as if he were out of breath. I 92

EVENING GROSBEAK.

4/5 Life size.

Conspicuously Yellow and Orange

Blue-winged Warbler (HelminthopUla pinus) Wood Warbler family

Called also: BLUE-WINGED YELLOW WARBLER Length—4.75 inches. An inch and a half shorter than the Eng- Male—Crownlish sparrow.of head and all under parts bright yellow. Back olive-green. Wings and tail bluish slate, the former with white bars, and three outer tail quills with large white Female—Palerpatches onandtheirmoreinnerolive.webs. Range—Eastern United States, from southern New England and

Minnesota, the northern limit of its nesting range, to Mexico and Central America, where it winters. Migrations—May. September. Summer resident.

In the naming of warblers, bluish slate is the shade intended when blue is mentioned; so that if you see a dainty little olive and yellow bird with slate-colored wings and tail hunting for spiders in the blossoming orchard or during the early autumn, you will have seen the beautiful blue-winged warbler. It has a rather leisurely way of hunting, unlike the nervous, restless flitting about from twig to twig that is characteristic of many of its many cousins. The search is thorough—bark, stems, blossoms, leaves are inspected for larvae and spiders, with many pretty motions of head and body. Sometimes, hanging with head downward, the bird suggests a yellow titmouse. After blossom time a pair of these warblers, that have done serviceable work in the orchard in their all too brief stay, hurry off to dense woods to nest. They are usually to be seen in pairs at all seasons. Not to “high coniferous trees in northern forests”—the Mecca of innumerable warblers—but to scrubby, second growth of woodland borders, or lower trees in the heart of the woods, do these dainty birds retreat. There they build the usual warbler nest of twigs, bits of bark, leaves, and grasses, but with this peculiarity the numerous leaves with which the nest is wrapped all have their stems pointing upward. Mr. Frank Chapman has admirably —swee-chee,defined their thesongfirstas inhaled,consistingtheofsecond“ two exhaled.”drawled, wheezy notes

1 93

)

Conspicuously Yellow and Orange

Canadian Warbler (Sylvania canadensis Wood Warbler family

Called also: CANADIAN FLYCATCHER; SPOTTED CANA-

DIAN WARBLER

Length— 5 to 5.6 inches. About an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male—Immaculate bluish ash above, without marks on wings or tail; crown spotted with arrow-shaped black marks. Cheeks, line from bill to eye, and underneath clear yellow. Black Female—streaksPaler,formingwith necklacea necklaceindistinct.across the breast. Fange—North America, from Manitoba and Labrador to tropics. Migrations—May. September. Summer resident; most abundant in migrations.

Since about one-third of all the song-birds met with in a year’s rambles are apt to be warblers, the novice cannot devote his first attention to a better group, confusing though it is by reason of its size and the repetition of the same colors in so many bewildering combinations. Monotony, however, is unknown in the warbler family. Whoever can rightly name every warbler, male and female, on sight is uniquely accomplished.

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