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. 
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