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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