Length: About 5½ inches.
Male and Female: Back, wings, and tail olive-green, without white markings; head with two narrow and two broad black stripes, alternating with three cream-colored stripes; under parts cream-colored, lighter on throat and belly.
Song: A weak trill.
Habitat: “The Worm-eating warbler seems to prefer dense undergrowth in swampy thickets and wet places, ... wooded hillsides and ravines, and dense undergrowths of woodland.... The nesting site is on the ground.”[140]
Range: Eastern North America from southern Iowa, northern Illinois, western Pennsylvania, and the lower Hudson and Connecticut valleys, south to Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and the mountains of South Carolina.
GROUP TWO—THE BLACK AND WHITE WARBLERS
1. THE BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER
Length: About 5¼ inches.
Male: Black, streaked with white—no yellow; head with broad black and white stripes; body with narrow stripes; white stripe over eye, black patch back of eye; striped throat and sides, white belly; tail grayish black; outer tail-feathers with white patches on inner web; wings black, with two distinct white bars.
Female: Similar, but with gray cheeks and whiter under parts, fainter streaks, and brownish sides.
Song: A thin, unmusical se-se′-se-se′-se-se′-se-se′.
This Black-and-White Warbler is as easy to identify as a zebra, because of its conspicuous black and white stripes. As it is found on tree-trunks, it is sometimes confused with the brown creeper. Its bill, however, is not curved like the creeper’s, nor is its tail used as a prop. It resembles the nuthatch in its ability to descend as well as ascend tree-trunks.
These warblers, though they obtain their food from trees, nest on the ground in nests not unlike those of the oven-bird.
2. THE BLACK-POLL WARBLER
Length: About 5 inches.
Male: A black crown and white cheeks, giving the effect of a black cap pulled down over the eyes; throat and belly white; back and sides gray, streaked with black; two white wing-bars; two outer tail-feathers with white spot near tip.
Female: Olive-green above, streaked with black; breast and sides with yellowish wash.
Range: Widely distributed; common in the East during migration. Breeds in the forests of Alaska and north-central Canada, in Michigan, northern Maine, and the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont.
Black-poll Warblers are similar in coloring to the black-and-white warblers, but are duller and less striking in appearance. In the breeding season, father, mother, and young differ in plumage, though a practiced eye may see resemblances, but in the fall they don coats so similar that they seem to have adopted a family costume.
The migration of black-poll warblers is interesting. Dr. Wells W. Cooke says: “All black-poll warblers winter in South America. Those that are to nest in Alaska strike straight across the Caribbean Sea to Florida and go northwestward to the Mississippi River. Then the direction changes and a course is laid almost due north to northern Minnesota, in order to avoid the treeless plains of North Dakota. But when the forests of the Saskatchewan are reached, the northwestern course is resumed, and, with a slight verging toward the west, is held until the nesting site in Alaska spruces is attained.”[141]