South Carolina: 31 records, April 2 to May 22; 21 records, April 14 to 26, indicating the height of the season (Harris).
DENDROICA DOMINICA ALBILORA Ridgway
SYCAMORE YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER
Plate [44]
HABITS
This western form of the yellow-throated warbler makes its summer home in the Mississippi Valley, from southern Wisconsin and southern Michigan southward, and it winters in Mexico and Central America. Although its winter range is so widely separated from that of the eastern form and its summer range, mainly west of the Alleghenies, is quite distinct, the two forms are very much alike in characters and habits. Ridgway (1902) describes it as similar to the yellow-throated warbler, “but with much smaller bill, the superciliary stripe more rarely yellow anteriorly, and with white areas on inner webs of lateral rectrices averaging decidedly larger.”
Allison wrote to Dr. Chapman (1907) that in southern Louisiana, “it has a strong liking for woods shrouded in heavy festoons of Spanish moss, and, therefore, keeps much to the cypress swamps; but it is common in the less damp woods in the same regions; on the northern shores of Lake Pontchartrain it spreads slightly from the cypress swamp into the pines. It is essentially a bird of the larger trees, and swampy forest may be considered its typical habitat.” M. G. Vaiden, of Rosedale, Miss., tells me that he always looks for the sycamore warbler in the cypresses, and that it is seldom found elsewhere, except on migrations.
Ridgway (1889) says of its haunts in Illinois: “The Sycamore Warbler is a common summer resident in the bottom-lands, where, according to the writer’s experience, it lives chiefly in the large sycamore trees along or near water courses.” In Indiana, according to A. W. Butler (1898), “the Sycamore Warbler does not depart from the vicinity of streams, even following small creeks, along which sycamores grow, for quite a distance towards their source. They seem to prefer these trees, spending much time among their highest branches, but they may also be found among all the trees fringing waterways, sometimes quite near the ground, and often are seen among our orchards, lawns, and even the shade trees along the streets of towns in the valleys.”
It seems to be partial to the large, picturesque, stream-loving sycamores in other parts of its range, as far north and east as Michigan and Ohio, thus deserving its well-chosen name. In many places these fine trees have disappeared, and the warblers have become scarce or have gone entirely.