THE WOOD WARBLERS 



THE GENERAL CHARACTERS OF WARBLERS 



The American Warblers (Family Mniotiltidse), or Wood 

 Warblers as they are more formally called to distinguish them from 

 the wholly different Old World Warblers (Family Sylviidae), are 

 small insectivorous birds with generally slender, sharp-pointed, 

 sometimes flattened, but never hooked (as in the Vireonidae) bills. 

 The three or four outer primaries are longest and of nearly the 

 same length, the tarsus is posteriorly ridged (not rounded as in the 

 Tyrannidae), the hind-claw never lengthened (as in the Alaudidas or 

 Motacillidae). 



The broad, bristly billed, flycatching members of the family are 

 too brightly colored to be mistaken for most North American repre- 

 sentatives of the true Flycatchers (Family Tyrannidae), from which 

 they differ in other respects, and, among North American birds, 

 the Warblers are to be confused in nature only with the Vireos and 

 Kinglets. From the Vireos they differ in wing-formula and in lack- 

 ing a hooked bill, while in life they may usually be distinguished from 

 them by their greater activity. The Vireos are more deliberate in 

 movement, they peer, while the Warblers pirouette, or flutter, turning 

 the whole body this way then that, darting or springing here or there, 

 the embodiment of perpetual motion among birds. 



The Kinglets are smaller than the smallest Warbler, except 

 Lucy's Warbler. In the Golden-crowned Kinglet the black and 

 orange or yellow crest is always diagnostic, while the Ruby-crown's 

 habit of nervously twitching its wings, and wren-like call note will 

 readily distinguish it from any Warbler. 



PLUMAGE OF WARBLERS 



Development of Plumage. When a Warbler leaves the egg it is 

 apparently naked, but close examination will reveal on the feather- 

 tracts of the upper surface of the body a scanty growth of the finest 

 down. This is the 'natal down'. (See Dwight, 'The Sequence of 



