MNIOTILTID^— THE AMERICAN WARBLEES. 118 



FAiriLY MNIOTILTID^.— The American Warblers. 



The extensive and varied family of Mniotiituhe, or "Warblers," 

 constitutes a most attractive element of the North American Omis. 

 Next to the Friui/illiihe, it is more numerously represented than 

 any other, while it is even more characteristic, all the species being 

 purely American, while the FruiyiUUhe are, as a family, cosmopoli- 

 tan. With a few exceptions they are eminently migratory birds, the 

 great bulk of them passing rapidly across the United States in 

 spring, on the way to their northern breeding grounds, and in fall to 

 their winter residence within the tropics ; consequently, they are 

 known to few except the close observer of bird-life, though in season 

 they literally swarm where their insect food is most plentiful — 

 always where the green leaves are, whether in lofty tree-top, vine- 

 embowered coppice, or budding orchard. When the apple trees 

 bloom, the warblers revel among the flowers, vieing in activity 

 and in number with the bees ; now probing the recesses of a blos- 

 som for an insect which has effected lodgment there, then darting 

 to another, where, poised daintily upon a slender twig, or suspended 

 from it, he explores hastily but carefully for another morsel. Every 

 movement is the personification of nervous activity, as if the time 

 for their journey was short ; and, indeed, such appears to be the 

 case, for two or three days at most suffice some species in a single 

 locality; a day spent in gleaning through the woods and orchards 

 of one neighborhood, with occasional brief siestas among the leafy 

 bowers, then the following night in continuous flight toward its 

 northern destination, is probably the history of every individual of 

 the moving throng. 



No group of birds more deserves the epithet of "pretty" than the 

 warblers : Tanagers are splendid ; Humming-birds are refulgent ; 

 other kinds are brilliant, gaudy or magnificent, but warblers alone 

 are pretty in the proper and full sense of that term. One of the 

 finest {Dendroica maculosa) is decked in richest yellow, deepest black, 

 purest white and softest blue-gray, in elegant pattern and har- 

 monious contrast ; in another (£>. blackburnloe) the intense cadmium- 

 orange throat glows like a burning coal, so strong is the contrast 



