The Yellow Warbler {Dendrolca aestiva aestiva) 



By Thomas Nuttall 



Length : 5 inches. 



Range : North America, except southwestern part. 



Food : Insects and wild berries. 



This is a lively, unsuspicious, and almost familiar little bird, and its bright 

 golden color renders it very conspicuous as in pursuit of flitting insects it pries 

 and darts among the blossoming shrubs and orchards. It is particularly attached 

 to willow trees and other kinds in moist and shady situations, that afford this 

 and other species a variety of small larvae and caterpillars, on which they delight 

 to feed. While incessantly and busily employed, it occasional!}- mounts the 

 twig, and with a loud, shrill, and almost piercing voice it earnestly utters, at 

 short and irregular intervals, tsli tsh tsJi tsh tshaia, or tshe tshe tsh tshayia tshe 

 tshc, this last phrase rather plaintive and interrogatory, as if expecting the recog- 

 nition of its mate. Sometimes, but jxirticularly after the commencement of in- 

 cubation, a more extended and pleasing modulated song is heard, as sc te te 

 tsliislioo^ or tsh tsJi tsheetshoo, tshc tshe tshc ishoo pcctshee, and tshe tshe tshe 

 tshe tshaia tship o zvay, the termination tender, plaintive, and solicitous. Some- 

 times I have heard this note varied to soit soit soit soit tship a zccc. Although 

 the song of these birds may be heard, less vigorously, to the month of August, 

 yet they do not appear to raise more than a single brood ; about the close of the 

 month in the northern states they disappear, and wing their way by easy stages 

 to their tropical destination. 



The nest is commonly fixed in the forks of a barberry bush, close shrub, or 

 sapling, a few feet from the ground. Sometimes I have known the nest placed 

 upon the horizontal branch of a hornbeam, more than fifteen feet from the 

 ground, or even fifty feet high in the forks of a thick sugar maple or orchard tree. 

 These lofty situations are, however, extraordinary, and the little architects, in 

 instances of this kind, occasionally fail in giving the usual security to their habita- 

 tions. The nest is extremely neat and durable; the exterior is formed of layers 

 of Asclepias, or silkweed lint, glutinously though slightly attached to the sup- 

 porting twigs, mixed with some slender strips of fine bark and pine needles. It 

 is thickly bedded with the down of willows, the nankeen wool of the Virginian 

 cotton grass, the down of fern stalks, the hair from the downy seeds of the syca- 

 more (Platanus), or the pappus of compound flowers; and then lined with either 

 fine bent grass (Agrostis), or down, and horsehair, and rarely with a few acci- 

 dental feathers. Circumstances sometimes require a variation from the usual 

 habits of this species. 



In Roxbury, near Boston, I saw a nest built in a currant bush in a small 

 garden very near to the house ; and as the branch did not present the proper site 

 of security, a large floor of dry grass and weeds was first made betwixt it and 

 a contiguous board fence; in the midst of this mass of extraneous materials the 



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