I 



Conspicuously Yellow and Orange 



Prairie Warbler 



(Dendroicc discolor i Wood Warbler fa mi 'y 



^"''Li-il^ns, Ua^r'ow. ^'°"^ ^" '''-' ''' ^ ^^'^ ^h-^- ^'^- 



'^^''^7S'l''^r'"y'^°'''' '^*'^'"^ ^° yellov/ish on the head, and 

 w h brick-red spots on back between the shoulders. A 



hr Ir ',"m' °^'I; ^'''. 'y'= wing-bars and all under parts 

 bight yellow heavily streaked with black on the sides. 



whuJinTSerlafl Zl^^ """"^ ^^'^^ ''' ^'-^- ^^^ 



^'''' dS?n^lThan^rafe^:^^^ ""^ ^"^'^' °"^^' '^"^ "^^'^^-^- '-^ 

 7?a«^.-Eastern half of the United States. Nests as fir north as 



New England and Michigan. Winters from Florida south- 



w<irci. 



M/jrra(io»s-May. September. Summer resident. 



Doubtless this din...iutive bird was given its name because 

 It prefers open country rather than the woods-the scrubby under- 

 growth of oaks, young evergreens, and bushes that border clear- 

 ings being as good a place as any to look for it, and not the 

 wind-swept, treeless tracts of the wild West. Its range is south- 

 erly. The Southern and Middle States are where it is most 

 abundant. Here is a wood warbler that is not a bird of the 

 woods-less so, in fact, than either the summer yellowbird 

 (yellow warbler) or the palm warbler, that are eminently neigh- 

 borly and fond of pasture lands and roadside thickets. But the 

 prairie warblers are rather more retiring little sprites than their 

 cousins, and it is not often we get a close enough view of them 

 to note the brick-red spots on their backs, which are their distin- 

 guishing marks. They have a most unkind preference for briery 

 bushes, that discourage human intimacy. In such forbidding 

 retreats they build their nest of plant-fibre, rootlets, and twigs" 

 hned with plant-down and hair. 



The song of an individual prairie warbler makes only a 

 slight impression. It consists " of a series of six or seven quickly 

 repeated ^ees. the next to the last one being the highest " (Chap- 

 man). But the united voices of a dozen or more of these pretty 

 httle birds, that often sing together, afford something approach- 

 ing a musical treat. 



20I 



