Palm Warblers are up and down tail-tilting individualists among the Dendroica, and this strange characteristic enables the observer to easily identify them.
In a small field half a mile west of my home, where birches are reclaiming their own. I see every year small numbers of these chestnut-capped birds on their way north in company with Myrtle Warblers. Watching one parade along a down tree trunk I was struck with the extreme dignity of its walk and then — the tail waved! — but even this comical exhibition had a certain reserve about it. The little fellows are so trim, self-possessed and sure of themselves that I could not think of them as clowns.
Eastern North America from Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland south to Louisiana and Florida.