Unlike a good child, who should "be seen and not heard," he is heard more frequently than seen. Very shy, of peering eyes, he keeps well out of sight in the meadow grass before entrancing our listening ears. The bobolink never soars like the lark, as the poets would have us believe, but generally sings on the wing, flying with a peculiar self-conscious flight horizontally thirty or forty feet above the meadow grass. He also sings perched upon the fence or tuft of grass. He is one of the greatest poseurs among the birds.
In spring and early summer the bobolinks respond to every poet's effort to imitate their notes. "Dignified 'Robert of Lincoln' is telling his name," says one; "Spink, spank, spink," another hears him say. But best of all are Wilson Flagg's lines:
". . .Now they rise and now they fly;
They cross and turn, and in and out; and down the middle and wheel about, With a 'Phew, shew, Wadolincon; listen to me Bobolincon!"After midsummer the cares of the family have so worn upon the jollity of our dashing, rollicking friend that his song is seldom heard. The colors of his coat fade into a dull yellowish brown like that of his faithful mate, who has borne the greater burden of the season, for he has two complete moults each year.
The bobolinks build their nest on the ground in high grass. The eggs are of a bluish white. Their food is largely insectivorous: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, spiders, with seeds of grass especially for variety.
In August they begin their journey southward, flying mainly by night. Arriving in the Southern States, they become the sad-colored, low-voiced rice or reed bird, feeding on the rice fields, where they descend to the ignominious fate of being dressed for the plate of the epicure.
Could there be a more tragic ending to the glorious note of the gay songster of the north?
BLACKPOLL WARBLER (Dendroica striata) Wood Warbler family Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow.
Male -- Black cap; cheeks and beneath grayish white, forming a sort of collar, more or less distinct. Upper parts striped gray, black, and olive. Breast and under parts white, with black streaks. Tail olive-brown, with yellow-white spots.
Female -- Without cap. Greenish-olive above, faintly streaked with black. Paler than male. Bands on wings, yellowish.
Range -- North America, to Greenland and Alaska. In winter, to northern part of South America.
Migrations -- Last of May. Late October.
A faint "screep, screep," like "the noise made by striking two pebbles together," Audubon says, is often the only indication of the blackpoll's presence; but surely that tireless bird-student had heard its more characteristic notes, which, rapidly uttered, increasing in the middle of the strain and diminishing toward the end, suggest the shrill, wiry burn of some midsummer insect. After the opera-glass has searched him out we find him by no means an inconspicuous bird. A dainty little fellow, with a glossy black cap pulled over his eyes, he is almost hidden by the dense foliage on the trees by the time he returns to us at the very end of spring. Giraud says that he is the very last of his tribe to come north, though the bay-breasted warbler has usually been thought the bird to wind up the spring procession.
The blackpoll has a certain characteristic motion that distinguishes him from the black-and-white creeper, for which a hasty glance might mistake him, and from the jolly little chickadee with his black cap. Apparently he runs about the tree-trunk, but in reality he so flits his wings that his feet do not touch the bark at all; yet so rapidly does he go that the flipping wing-motion is not observed. He is most often seen in May in the apple trees, peeping into the opening blossoms for insects, uttering now and then his slender, lisping, brief song.
Vivacious, a busy hunter, often catching insects on the wing like the flycatchers, he is a cheerful, useful neighbor the short time he spends with us before travelling to the far north, where he mates and nests. A nest has been found on Slide Mountain, in the Catskills, but the hardy evergreens of Canada, and sometimes those of northern New England, are the chosen home of this little bird that builds a nest of bits of root, lichens, and sedges, amply large for a family twice the size of his.
BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER (Mniotilta varia) Wood Warbler family Called also: VARIED CREEPING WARBLER; BLACK-AND WHITE CREEPER;WHITEPOLL WARBLER; [BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, AOU 1998]
Length -- 5 to inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow.
Male -- Upper parts white, varied with black. A white stripe along the summit of the head and back of the neck, edged with black. White line above and below the eye. Black cheeks and throat, grayish in females and young. Breast white in middle, with black stripes on sides. Wings and tail rusty black, with two white cross-bars on former, and soiled white markings on tail quills.
Female -- Paler and less distinct markings throughout.
Range -- Peculiar to America. Eastern United States and westward to the plains. North as far as the fur countries. Winters in tropics south of Florida.
Migrations -- April. Late September. Summer resident.
Nine times out of ten this active little warbler is mistaken for the downy woodpecker, not because of his coloring alone, but also on account of their common habit of running up and down the trunks of trees and on the under side of branches, looking for insects, on which all the warblers subsist. But presently the true warbler characteristic of restless flitting about shows itself. A woodpecker would go over a tree with painstaking, systematic care, while the black-and-white warbler, no less intent upon securing its food, hurries off from tree to tree, wherever the most promising menu is offered.
