With its definitely marked plumage and friendly unsuspicious habits, this Warbler is perhaps the most easily identified of all these elusive birds. Its thin wiry notes are heard here in Dutchess County two weeks or more before the main migration influx of its brother sprites. Some years only the dainty Yellow Palm Warbler precedes it. It prefers second growth and fairly open woodland and is seldom seen in the deeper forests. Its song is thin but so highly pitched that its carrying capacity exceeds all other Warblers! One still April day I found, by pacing the distance, that a singing bird was nearly one thousand feet away.
The females exhibit extraordinary solicitude for the safety of their homes and will carry on like Mother Grouse with simulated broken legs and wings and much fluttering designed to lure the intruder away from her treasures.
NEST: Rather large and bulky, of bark strips, dead leaves, grass and small roots; lined with hair and sometimes semi-roofed. Located on ground at base of tree, bush or stump or under shelter of an upturned tree root, log or rock.
EGGS: Four or five, white or creamy; heavily and thickly spotted with chestnut and lavender.
Eastern North America, north to Newfoundland and west to the Mackenzie Valley and Rocky Mountains. Winters in Florida and southern Texas and northern South America.
A small tree, rarely more than 25 feet high, distributed in the naborhood of the coast from North Carolina to Louisiana.