After one has seen a golden-winged warbler fluttering hither and thither about the shrubbery of a park within sight and sound of a great city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather misleading name he bears. But, then, most warblers' names are misleading. They serve their best purpose in cultivating patience and other gentle virtues in the novice.
Such habits and choice of haunts as characterize the blue-winged warbler are also the golden-winged's. But their voices are quite different, the former's being sharp and metallic, while the latter's zee, zee, zee comes more lazily and without accent.
MYRTLE WARBLER (Dendroica coronata) Wood Warbler family Called also: YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER [AOU 1998]; MYRTLE BIRD;YELLOW-CROWNED WARBLER
Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow.
Male -- In summer plumage: A yellow patch on top of head, lower back, and either side of the breast. Upper parts bluish slate, streaked with black. Upper breast black; throat white; all other under parts whitish, streaked with black. Two white wing bars, and tail quills have white spots near the tip. In winter:
Upper parts olive-brown, streaked with black; the yellow spot on lower back the only yellow mark remaining. Wing-bars grayish.
Female -- Resembles male in winter plumage.
Range -- Eastern North America. Occasional on Pacific slope.
Summers from Minnesota and northern New England northward to Fur Countries. Winters from Middle States south ward into Central America; a few often remaining at the northern United States all the winter.
Migrations -- April. October. November. Also, but more rarely, a winter resident.
The first of the warblers to arrive in the spring and the last to leave us in the autumn, some even remaining throughout the northern winter, the myrtle warbler, next to the summer yellowbird, is the most familiar of its multitudinous kin. Though we become acquainted with it chiefly in the migrations, it impresses us by its numbers rather than by any gorgeousness of attire. The four yellow spots on crown, lower back, and sides are its distinguishing marks; and in the autumn these marks have dwindled to only one, that on the lower back or rump. The great difficulty experienced in identifying any warbler is in its restless habit of flitting about.
For a few days in early May we are forcibly reminded of the Florida peninsula, which fairly teems with these birds; they become almost superabundant, a distraction during the precious days when the rarer species are quietly slipping by, not to return again for a year, perhaps longer, for some warblers are notoriously irregular in their routes north and south, and never return by the way they travelled in the spring.
But if we look sharply into every group of myrtle warblers, we are quite likely to discover some of their dainty, fragile cousins that gladly seek the escort of birds so fearless as they. By the last of May all the warblers are gone from the neighborhood except the constant little summer yellowbird and redstart.
In autumn, when the myrtle warblers return after a busy enough summer passed in Canadian nurseries, they chiefly haunt those regions where juniper and bay-berries abound. These latter (Myrica cerifera), or the myrtle wax-berries, as they are sometimes called, and which are the bird's favorite food, have given it their name. Wherever the supply of these berries is sufficient to last through the winter, there it may be found foraging in the scrubby bushes.
Sometimes driven by cold and hunger from the fields, this hardiest member of a family that properly belongs to the tropics, seeks shelter and food close to the outbuildings on the farm.
PARULA WARBLER (Compsothlypis americana) Wood Warbler family Called also: BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WARBLER; [NORTHERN PARULA, AOU1998]
Length -- 4.5 to 4.75 inches. About an inch and a half shorter than the English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Slate-colored above, with a greenish-yellow or bronze patch in the middle of the back. Chin, throat, and breast yellow. A black, bluish, or rufous band across the breast, usually lacking in female. Underneath white, sometimes marked with rufous on sides, but these markings are variable.
Wings have two white patches; outer tail feathers have white patch near the end.
Range -- Eastern North America. Winters from Florida southward.
Migrations -- April. October. Summer resident.
Through an open window of an apartment in the very heart of New York City, a parula warbler flew this spring of 1897, surely the daintiest, most exquisitely beautiful bird visitor that ever voluntarily lodged between two brick walls.
A number of such airy, tiny beauties flitting about among the blossoms of the shrubbery on a bright May morning and swaying on the slenderest branches with their inimitable grace, is a sight that the memory should retain into old age.
