CALIFORNIA YELLOW WARBLER
HABITS
The 1931 A. O. U. Check-List gives the breeding range of this subspecies as the “Pacific coast strip from western Washington south through Oregon and California, west of the Great Basin and southeastern deserts to about lat. 30° in Lower California.” It intergrades with rubiginosa on the north and with morcomi to the eastward, but exact boundaries are difficult to define. It seems to range well up into the mountains, for James B. Dixon tells me that he has found it nesting in Mono County, Calif., at altitudes of 6,500 to 9,200 feet.
Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1903) in an interesting study of western yellow warblers, bestowed the above name on the California bird, for which he gives the following subspecific characters: “Resembling Dendroica aestiva aestiva, from which it differs in smaller size, paler (or less brightly yellow) coloration, and, in the male, narrower streaking on under surface; differs from Dendroica aestiva rubiginosa in much smaller size and yellower coloration, and from Dendroica aestiva sonorana in smaller size and much darker coloration.”
Spring.—Both rubiginosa and brewsteri occur in California and in Washington on migrations. As it is difficult to distinguish the two forms in life, some of the following remarks may refer to either or both of these two subspecies. Mrs. Amelia S. Allen writes to me that this species “is the latest of the warblers to arrive in the San Francisco Bay region for the breeding season. Sometimes they are here by April 8, but the average date is about April 18. At Lake Tahoe, the first week of June, breeding pairs were settled in the willows and migrants on their way farther north were migrating through.”
Samuel F. Rathbun says in his Washington notes: “Our experience with this species, based on many years of observation, is that the birds in the spring migration progress northward in a series of what may be called waves. Invariably the first noted will be one or two individuals, and these are heard for a short time only and evidently move on. Then there is a break of a day or so before the next are heard, a larger number. A period of a day, or perhaps two or three, may again elapse before the main body of birds arrive and they are heard on all sides. Common in and about the city at this period, it haunts the shade trees lining the streets and the fruit trees in the gardens, but is not at all partial to the outlying sections, except in the more cultivated areas and the orchards. It is essentially a bird of the older settled districts, wherever fruit trees and deciduous trees may abound.”
For May 6, 1924, he remarks, “These warblers drifted by all day, in ones and twos or threes, straggling, but, although seemingly widely separated, always within hearing distance of each other. At times there will be a break when apparently none are passing, then in the distance the song will be heard again, soon growing louder, as the bird draws nearer, following in the wake of others that have preceded him, his song in turn growing fainter in the distance after he has passed.”
Nesting.—The summer haunts and nesting habits of the California yellow warbler are generally similar to those of the eastern bird. Grinnell and Storer (1924) write:
Yellow warblers nest abundantly on the floor of Yosemite Valley. Some of the nests are in growths close to water, whereas others are located in brush tangles or other rank growths back some distance from the streams. A nest found June 7, 1915, may be taken as fairly typical. It was 52 inches above the ground in the crotch of a forking stem of a chokecherry which grew in a clump of the same plant, and was shaded by a black oak. As usual it was higher than wide outside, being 31⁄2 inches in height by 3 to 31⁄4 inches in diameter. The cuplike cavity was 13⁄4 inches across at the top and the same in depth at the center. Shreds of bark and flat plant fibers were the principal materials used in construction, the lining being of horsehair and a few feathers.
One nest was “4 feet above the ground in a mountain lilac (Ceanothus integerrimus),” and another “was placed about 15 feet above the ground in a small pine tree growing at the margin of a pond. It rested on the next to the topmost whorl of branches and one side was against the slender trunk of the tree.”