This Warbler — only distinguishable by slightly superior size and a more evenly yellow breast from the Yellow Redpoll of the Interior and Western States - is a lover of cool, brisk weather, and is almost the first of its tribe to pass upward to its northern breeding-grounds. It spends a few early April days in the leafless roadside bushes, often appearing when the first hepaticas are in bloom, and leaving before the shadbush blossoms, and, though it feeds on the ground, it has the habit of making little sallies into the air like the Redstart and the Flycatchers.
It does not return in autumn until warm weather is a thing of the past, and is not at all abashed if a hard frost, or even a flurry of snow, overtakes it, seeming to partake of the nature of the Yellow-rumped Warbler, who is the winter companion of Chickadees and Kinglets.
Prairie Warbler: Dendroica discolor.
- Length:
- 4.75-5 inches.
- Male and Female:
- Colours much broken up. Upper parts olive-green or yellow, chestnut-red streaks across back between the wings. Under parts beautiful yellow; also yellow streak running from nostril back of eye, and two yellow wing bands. Sides of neck and body streaked with black; also black line through eye. Inner webs of outer tail feathers white. Female paler, and chestnut bars obscured.
- Song:
- Wee-wee-chee-chee-chee-chee !"
- Season:
- Common May migrant; also probably breeds here.
- Breeds:
- Through its United States range.
- Nest:
- In small trees or low brush, scrub pines, etc. Cedar and grapevine bark, feathers and fern down, elaborate and beautiful.
- Eggs:
- 4, greenish white, wreathed on larger end with various browns.
- Range:
- Eastern United States to the Plains, north to Michigan and southern New England; winters in southern Florida and the West Indies.
The diminutive Prairie Warbler, which may be known by the reddish streaks across its back, has a decidedly southerly range. It is quite abundant all through the Middle and Southern States, and fairly common along the Massachusetts seaboard — Massachusetts seems to be its usual north-
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