The Orange-crowned Warblers 



Taken in Oregon 



Warblers; and even of those which are not frankly all-over yellow, as 

 this one is, there are only two which do not boast a conspicuous area of 

 this fashionable shade. And of all yellows, yellow-green, as represented 

 by the back of this bird, is the commonest, — so common, indeed, as to 

 merit the facetious epithet "museum color." It is all very well in the 

 case of the male, for he enters the State from the south during the first 

 week in March, before other birds are moving very much; and he is so 

 full of confidence at this season that he poses quite demurely among the 

 swelling buds of willow and ceanothus, or in the more difficult tops of 

 live oaks. 



He is proud of his full 

 crown-patch of pale 

 orange, contrasting as it 

 does with the dull yel- 

 lowish green of the 

 upperparts and the 

 bright greenish yellow 

 of the underparts, — and 

 he lets you get a good 

 view of it at twenty 

 yards, with the glasses. 

 Besides that, he must 

 stop now and then to 

 vent his feelings in song. 

 But the case of the fe- 

 male is almost hopeless 

 —for the novice. 



Lutescent Warblers 

 abound in summer in 

 timbered sections nearly 

 throughout the State, although south of the Tehachipi they are not 

 regularly found breeding below the upper mountain levels. Jungle of 

 any kind suits them, whether it be a thicket of young firs at Weaverville, 

 an overgrown burn in the Sierra National Forest, a willow swamp in Modoc 

 County, or a fern bank in a Santa Barbara canyon. It is, therefore, 

 unquestionably the most abundant and most uniformly distributed Wood 

 Warbler in California. Nests of this species are of dead grasses well 

 knitted, and sunk flush with the ground, or below it, in some moss bed, 

 at the base of a bush, or on some sloping hillside. Rarely the structure 

 may be taken up into a bush. The female is a close sitter, but once 

 flushed shows implacable resentment. She summons her mate to assist 

 in the gentle art of exorcism, or else turns the tables and deserts outright. 



446 



A HUNGRY CHICK 



LUTESCENT WARBLER, FEMALE AND YOUNG 



Photo by Bohlman c^ Finley 



