306 WABBLERS 



Warblers. 



Warblers are at once the most fascinating and 

 the most exasperating of birds. They come with 

 a rush in the spring, but though the woods are 

 full of them, nothing but a faint lisp from the 

 pine-tops suggests their presence, and if, intent 

 on other songs with which the air is ringing, you 

 ignore this, your opportunity is lost. But if you 

 close your ears with determination to all else, reso- 

 lutely concluding to devote yourself to Warblers, 

 the sight of a diminutive figure disappearing in a 

 high treetop will often be your only reward. 



But this is generalization — one of the most 

 dangerous kinds of all subtle forms of false wit- 

 ness. Some of the Warblers, it is true, lisp 

 faintly from the treetops, but others lift up loud- 

 ringing voices from the ground at your feet. In- 

 deed, they are a family of contradictions. 



With most, ' motley is surely the only wear,' 

 for their coats are patched with many colors ; but 

 some among them are as Quakerish as Vireos, with 

 never a spot on rectrix or primary to hint of their 

 station in life. Some of them dash about among 

 the leaves as if life depended on one particular 

 passing gnat ; others hunt soberly over the 

 branches, like Vireos. Though most of them hop 

 gayly on the few occasions when they descend to 

 earth, some staid members of the family walk 

 sedately over the ground, bobbiug their heads or 



