WARBLERS. 
——— 
WHEN you begin to study the warblers you will 
probably conclude that you know nothing about 
birds, and can never learn. But if you begin by 
recognizing their common traits, and then study 
a few of the easiest, and those that nest in your 
locality, you will be less discouraged; and when 
the flocks come back at the next migration you 
will be able to master the oddities of a larger 
number. They belong in pigeon-hole No. 9,— la- 
belled “ wood warblers,” and are a marked family. 
Most of them are very small — much less than 
half the size of a robin — and are not only short 
but slender. Active as the chickadee or kinglet, 
they flit about the trees and undergrowth after 
insects, without charity for the observer who is 
trying to make out their markings. Unlike the 
waxwing, whose quiet ways are matched by its 
subdued tints, or the uniformly coated kinglets or 
the greenlets in the pigeon-hole next to them, as 
a group, the warblers are dashed with all the glo- 
ries of the rainbow, a flock of them looking as if 
a painter’s palette had been thrown at them. You 
can see no philosophy or poetry in the bewilder- 
