Conspicuously Yellow and Oranj- w 



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 

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

 ing a musical treat. 



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