PARULA WARBLER 107 



Although this moss is parasitic on many kinds of trees and bushes, 

 it requires a moist, humid atmosphere and, in consequence, our War- 

 bler makes its home in wet, swampy places. The restriction of the 

 moss to comparatively limited areas often induces a number of pairs 

 of Parulas to nest near one another. Rawson^ mentions a swamp 

 near Norwich, Connecticut, containing seventy-five pairs. 



Some difficulty may be experienced in identifying fall specimens, 

 but in the spring the Parula is unquestionably a blue bird and as such 

 likely to be confused with few other Warblers. Furthermore, its 

 conspicuous wing-bars allied to its small size and chickadee-like 

 (hence the name Parula, a diminutive of Parus, a titmouse) habit of 

 feeding while hanging back downward, are good field characters. 



Gerald Thayer writes that the Parula is "common about the base 

 of Mt. Monadnock in woodland bogs where the trees — firs and spruces 

 and red maples, etc., — are thickly hung with usnea moss. But we 

 have also found several pairs of breeding Parulas in drier virgin 

 woods and old second growth where usnea was rare. The only nest 

 I have seen was in an usnea swamp, about twenty feet up in a bearded, 

 scrawny, two-thirds-dead fir balsam. It was not only made of usnea, 

 but made of a long, free-hanging usnea beard looped up and spliced 

 onto itself, thus forming a suspended basket-nest with a roof, — and 

 a small side entrance. It was big for the size of the birds, 

 and suggested a European Long-tailed Tit's nest. In certain views 

 from the ground, it showed globose and dark against the sky. The 

 three eggs lay on a scanty bed of wild cherry stems — the only 'imported' 

 building material the nest contained. 



"The Parula is less nervous in its movements than most of our 

 Warblers, and it is also among the tamest of them. Its 'beat' lies 

 between the forest under-scrub and the tops of all but the very 

 highest trees. A blue-gray, black-cheeked Warbler, with conspicuous 

 white wing-marks, much white in the tail, and a transverse dusky 

 smudge, sometimes partly reddish brown, on its yellow breast — such is 

 the adult male Parula. His greenish yellow saddle being almost of one 

 shade with the encompassing blue-gray, is very inconspicuous in life." 

 (Thayer, MS.) 



Song. — "The Parula is weak-voiced, and its call notes, as far as I 

 know, are slight and barely peculiar; but it has at least three main 

 songs, with a great range of variations. All may be recognized, or at 

 least distinguished from the weak songs of the Dendroiccu, like the 

 Blackburnian and Bay-breast, by their beady, buzzy tone. In phrasing, 

 in everything but this tone-quality, certain variations of the Parula's 



