Conspicuously Black and White 



Blackpoll Warbler 



(Dendroica striata) Wood Warbler family 



Length — 5.5 to 6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English 

 sparrow. 



Male—^\Ack cap; cheeks and beneath grayish white, forming a 

 sort of collar, more or less distinct. Upper parts striped 

 gray, black, and olive. Breast and under parts white, with 

 black streaks. Tail olive-brown, with yellow-white spots. 



Female — Without cap. Greenish-olive above, faintly streaked 

 with black. Paler than male. Bands on wings, yellowish. 



Range — North America, to Greenland and Alaska. In winter, to 

 northern part of South America. 



Migrations — Last of May. Late October. 



A faint " screep, screep," like "the noise made by striking 

 two pebbles together," Audubon says, is often the only indication 

 of the blackpoll's presence; but surely that tireless bird-student 

 had heard its more characteristic notes, which, rapidly uttered, 

 increasing in the middle of the strain and diminishing toward the 

 end, suggest the shrill, wiry hum of some midsummer insect. 

 After the opera-glass has searched him out we find him by no 

 means an inconspicuous bird. A dainty little fellow, with a 

 glossy black cap pulled over his eyes, he is almost hidden by the 

 dense foliage on the trees by the time he returns to us at the very 

 end of spring. Giraud says that he is the very last of his tribe to 

 come north, though the bay-breasted warbler has usually been 

 thought the bird to wind up the spring procession. 



The blackpoll has a certain characteristic motion that distin- 

 guishes him from the black-and-white creeper, for which a hasty 

 glance might mistake him, and from the jolly little chickadee with 

 his black cap. Apparently he runs about the tree-trunk, but in 

 reality he so flits his wings that his feet do not touch the bark at 

 all; yet so rapidly does he go that the flipping wing-motion is 

 not observed. He is most often seen in May in the apple trees, 

 peeping into the opening blossoms for insects, uttering now and 

 then his slender, lisping, brief song. 



Vivacious, a busy hunter, often catching insects on the wing 

 like the flycatchers, he is a cheerful, useful neighbor the short 

 time he spends with us before travelling to the far north, where 

 he mates and nests. A nest has been found on Slide Mountain, 

 in the Catskills, but the hardy evergreens of Canada, and some- 



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