Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 



Parula Warbler 



(Compsothlypis americana) Wood Warbler family 



Called also: BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WARBLER 



Length — 4.5 to 4.75 inches. About an inch and a half shorter 

 than the English sparrow. 



Male and Female — Slate-colored above, with a greenish-yellow or 

 bronze patch in the middle of the back. Chin, throat, and 

 breast yellow. A black, bluish, or rufous band across the 

 breast, usually lacking in female. Underneath white, some- 

 times marked with rufous on sides, but these markings are 

 variable. Wings have two white patches ; outer tail feathers 

 have white patch near the end. 



Range — Eastern North America. Winters from Florida southward. 



Migrations — April. October. Summer resident. 



Through an open window of an apartment in the very heart 

 of New York City, a parula warbler flew this spring of 1897, 

 surely the daintiest, most exquisitely beautiful bird visitor that 

 ever voluntarily lodged between two brick walls. 



A number of such airy, tiny beauties flitting about among the 

 blossoms of the shrubbery on a bright May morning and swaying 

 on the slenderest branches with their inimitable grace, is a sight 

 that the memory should retain into old age. They seem the very 

 embodiment of life, joy, beauty, grace; of everything lovely that 

 birds by any possibility could be. Apparently they are wafted 

 about the garden; they fly with no more effort than a dainty 

 lifting of the wings, as if to catch the breeze, that seems to lift 

 them as it might a bunch of thistledown. They go through a 

 great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food 

 upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a 

 nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now grace- 

 fully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, 

 pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects 

 to raise its pretty head and trill a short and wiry song. 



But the parula warbler does not remain long about the gar- 

 dens and orchards, though it will not forsake us altogether for 

 the Canadian forests, where most of its relatives pass the summer. 

 It retreats only to the woods near the water, if may be, or to just 

 as close a counterpart of a swampy southern woods, where the 



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