Identifier: birdlifeguidetos00chapman (find matches)
Title: Bird-life; a guide to the study of our common birds
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Chapman, Frank M. (Frank Michler), 1864-1945 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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is respect it resemblesthe Yellow-throat, from which it is to be distinguishedby its smaller size (length 5*25 inches), white iris, andwhite breast, only the sides of the breast being tingedwith yellow. It winters from Florida southward, andreaches us in the spring about May 1, to remain untilOctober. Warblers. (Family Mniotiltid^.) Warblers may be described as among our most abun-dant, most beautiful, and least-known birds. Of thethirty-five species regularly found in the northeasternStates, only three or four are familiar to the casual ob-server. The presence of the others is unsuspected, andwhen some chance brings one of these exquisite littlecreatures into our lives, the event is attended by all theexcitement of an actual discovery. We never forget ourfirst Warbler. It is because we do not see Warblers unless we lookfor them that they are strangers to so many persons whogo to the woods. They are, with some exceptions, smallbirds of limited vocal powers. They live in the tree tops,
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Plate LX. BLACK AND WHITE WARBLER. Length, 525 inches. Adult male, upper parts, breast, and sides black andwhite ; belly white. Adult female, similar, but with less black on underparts. 225 16 226 BLACK AND WHITE WARBLER. and tlieir lisping notes blend with other woodland voiceswithout attracting our attention. May and September are the months for Warblers.Some species arrive in A^iril, but they are most numer-ous between May 5 and 15, when the woods arethronged with their flitting forms. Less than half of ourthirty-five species remain to breed ; the others go to theirsummer homes in the coniferous forests of the Xorth.These northern birds return in the latter part of Augustand abound in September. Many of the Warblers seenat this season are immature birds wearing plumages sodifferent from those of the adult birds seen in the spring,that tlieir identity is not suspected, and, in effect, theyare new birds to us. To the field ornithologist AYarblers are therefore themost difficult as we

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