THE BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WOOD-WARBLEE. 
57 
Male, 4-J, 8£. 
From Texas northward. Very abundant. Spends the winter in all the 
Southern States. 
THE BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WOOD- WARBLER. 
SYLVICOLA AMERICANA, Lath. 
PLATE XCI. — Male axd Female. 
This pretty species enters Louisiana from the south as early as spring 
appears, at the period when most insects are found closer to the ground, and 
more about water-courses, than shortly after, when a warmer sun has invited 
every leaf and blossom to hail the approach of that season when they all 
become as brilliant as nature intended them to be. The little fellow under 
your eye is then seen flitting over damp places, such as the edges of ponds, 
lakes, and rivers, chasing its prey with as much activity and liveliness as 
any other of the delicate and interesting tribe to which it belongs. It alights 
on every plant in its way, runs up and down it, picks here and there a small 
winged insect, and should one, aware of its approach, fly off, pursues it and 
snatches it in an instant. 
I have placed a pair of these Warblers on a handsome species of iris. 
This plant grows in the water, and in the neighbourhood of New Orleans, a 
few miles below that city, where I found it abundantly, and in bloom, in the 
beginning of April. Several flowers are produced upon the same stem. I 
have not met with it anywhere else, and the name of Louisiana flag is the 
one commonly given it. 
As soon as the foliage of the forests begins to expand, the Blue Yellow- 
backed Warbler flies to the tops of the trees, and there remains during the 
season, gleaning amongst the leaves and branches, in the same active manner 
as it employed when nearer the ground, not leaving off its quick and short 
pursuit of small insects on the wing. When on the branches, it frequently 
raises its body (which is scarcely larger when stripped of its feathers than 
the first joint of a man's finger) upwards to the full length of its legs and 
toes, and is thus enabled to seize insects otherwise beyond its reach. 
» Its flight is that of a true Sylvia. It ascends for awhile in a very zigzag 
Vot, II. 9 
