The Canadian Horticulturist 



THE YELLOW WARBLER. 



^F all the different groups into which our native 

 birds are divided, there is none more interest- 

 ing than the one called the warbler family. Of 

 these there are many species, all small, and 

 most of them brilliant in color and shy wood 

 birds, seldom or never seen by the ordinary 

 observer. They live among the trees, feeding 

 on the insects, their comparatively slender bills 

 distinguishing them from the seed-eaters or 

 finches, to which family many of our common 

 small birds belong. 



One of these species has seen fit to change its habits since the settlement 

 of the country to the extent of leaving the woodland haunts of its ancestors, and 

 finding a congenial home near the habitations of mankind, where it finds food 

 in plenty in the myriads of insects that infest the leaves of the orchard and 

 shade trees, and a place to build its nest and rear its young in comparative 

 security in a lilac or honeysuckle bush, or, maybe, in an apple tree. This bird 

 has been called the Summer Yellow bird, but its proper name is the Yellew 

 Warbler. The confusion of names between this and the other " yellow bird " 

 — the one with the crown, wings and tail black — now called the American gold- 

 finch, is not likely to obtain in Ontario, because the latter is generally known 

 here as the canary, being supposed to be the wild form of our well-known cage 

 bird. 



The Yellow Warbler is yellow all over, greenish-yellow on the back and 

 golden-yellow on the crown and underparts. The wings and tail are not entirely 

 yellow, being dusky, with only the edges of the feathers yellow. The bill is dark, 

 and the male is distinguished from the female by light streaks of reddish brown 

 on the breast. 



That this bird should be able to see and take advantage of new conditions 

 in its surroundings argues a high degree of intelligence, and it gives us a further 

 proof in its methods of getting rid of the eggs of the cowbird. The cowbird, as 

 we know, builds no nest, but imposes the hatching of its eggs and the care of 

 its offspring on other birds by surreptitiously dropping its eggs in their nests, in 

 the manner of the European cuckoo. Most birds either do not understand the 

 deception, or else are unable to meet the difficulty. The Yellow Warbler proves 

 itself master of the situation by extending the nest upward, with a new floor 

 just over the obnoxious egg, thus walling it in below. All individuals, however, 

 are not equally gifted in this respect. A pair known to the writer built two 

 nests in the same season, to each of which the cowbird contributed an egg. 

 In one case human intervention saved them from a family disgrace, and in the 

 other the only offspring reared was an interesting cow-blackbird. 



