Conspicuously Yellow and Orange 



Prairie Warbler 



(Dendroica discolor) Wood Warbler family 



Length — ^4.75 to 5 inches. About an inch and a half shorter than 

 the English sparrow. 



Male — Olive-green above, shading to yellowish on the head, and 

 with brick-red spots on back between the shoulders. A 

 yellow line over the eye; wing-bars and all under parts 

 bright yellow, heavily streaked with black on the sides. 

 Line through the eye and crescent below it, black. Much 

 white in outer tail feathers. 



Female — Paler ; upper parts more grayish olive, and markings less 

 distinct than male's. 



Range — Eastern half of the United States. Nests as far north as 

 New England and Michigan. Winters from Florida south- 

 ward. 



Migrations — May. September. Summer resident. 



Doubtless this diminutive 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, 

 lined 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 

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

 ing a musical treat. 



