In the lowlands the Halesia or silver bell is putting out its graceful pendulous racemes of purest white, and it is time to look for the next migrant, the hooded warbler, one of the largest and finest of his race. A V of brilliant yellow coming down to the bill, covering the forehead and running backwards past the eye, bordered by a well defined band of intense black, and a back and tail of green slightly tinted with olive make him a marked bird. Unlike the parula, he cares nothing for treetops or sunshine; a perch on a swinging rattan vine or in a shrub in the dark woods hard by a canebrake is good enough for him.
As soon as the hooded warbler appears we will see the black and white creeping warbler, the connecting link (so to speak) between the creepers and warblers in both appearance and habits. Like our common brown creeper, he loves the dense woods, but unlike him seems to prefer the tops and higher branches. Alternate patches and streaks of white and black without a suggestion of the yellow or olive green so characteristic of his genus make his identification easy. His note is simple and short; in fact the sounds that he emits in his journeys are scarcely worth being called a song.
The flood tide comes about the first of April and lasts two weeks. Prominent among the multitude of visitors you may see a warbler slightly smaller than the hooded but of the same general coloring, yellow, black and green, only in this bird the black is in three patches, one on the top of the head, the others running from the bill back and down. This is the Kentucky warbler, a lover of the ground and of the low growths. There is another that the hasty observer might mistake for the hooded or the Kentucky, and that is the Maryland yellowthroat. The black on the latter is confined to broad bands of rich velvety black below the eyes; the yellow is more of a sulphur than a chrome shade, and the green is more nearly olive than in the two just mentioned. Many of this species make their summer home in this latitude, making their nests and rearing their broods in the mat of vines and weeds along the fence rows. The usual song is wichety, wichety, wichety, uttered with the cheerful vigor that makes the Carolina wren so attractive. During the months of April and May, 1900, I had frequent opportunities to observe two pairs of yellow throats that had built just inside the fence that parallels the railroad; the males, as they caught sight of me coming down the track, would mount the highest weed within reach and sing with all their might, but as I came opposite their perch would drop suddenly down into the weeds and remain there till I was well past, then resume their perch and song as long as I was in hearing.
Another of this family conspicuous for its brilliant coloring is the prothonotary warbler. Yellow breast, head, neck and shoulders, yellowish olive wings and back and darker olive tail render him conspicuous against any woodland background. If you want to see him during these busy April days we must go where he is, i. e., in the cypress or willow swamps. The dark gray festoons of Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) and the tender young green of the cypress leaves afford both contrast for his bright colors and provisions for his larder. Some of this species also nest here, choosing for their homes oftentimes the holes made by some of our smaller woodpeckers in dead willow stubs. I remember one morning seeing a cheerful flock of prothonotary and parula warblers and noticing one of the former leave his companions and fly to a clump of willows where another less brilliantly colored, presumably the female, joined him. Together they inspected the willow stubs, running in and out and up and down the trunks, peering into every cavity. Finally they found one that met their requirements, then, after a short but earnest discussion, flew away through the swamp.
Inhabiting the marshes and swamps is the Louisiana water thrush, a slender brown bird shaped much like the brown thrasher, only much smaller, being about six inches in length as compared with the thrasher’s eleven or twelve. A gifted singer, he is very wild and shy, always resenting the intrusion of the lords of creation upon his quiet haunts, flitting quietly on before you in the shadows, evincing his distrust of your motives by an occasional angry “clink.” He well illustrates the principle of compensation: though denied the brilliant yellows and greens of his warbler brethren, he surpasses them all in the quality of his song, as free, as beautiful, as wild as the bird himself. All the individuals of this species that I saw in three years’ observation were either in the water beeches (Carpinus caroliniana) that grew so thickly along the creek or in the sweet gums and cypress along the borders of an immense swamp.
As the Louisiana water thrush is the star soloist of the warbler contingent, so the yellow breasted chat is the clown of our woodland troupe. His coloring is vivid but simple, being green with a wash of olive above, lores black, breast bright chrome yellow, other under parts white or whitish. Under most circumstances this bird is shy and difficult to approach, as I learned by personal experience; but when one of his strange moods comes upon him—perhaps it is the approach of the nuptial season that so affects him—he doffs much of his shyness and becomes a veritable clown, making such a profusion and variety of noises that one would fain believe that there is a whole score of birds in the bush or thicket from which the medley proceeds. He darts out of his retreat and flies away over the shrubbery, twisting and turning his body, raising and dropping his tail as if all his joints were of the ball and socket pattern, making as many ridiculous contortions and as many varieties of squeaks and squalls as an old-time elocutionist.
Besides numerous individuals of the species of warblers already named, in the two weeks between April 9 and 23 I saw one or more of each of the following: Yellow or summer, bluewinged, worm-eating, magnolia, golden winged, chestnut sided, prairie, and the redstart. As I write these names they call up mornings spent in the land of the ’possum and persimmon while yet the steamy breath of the dew was going up to meet the fervor of an April sun, and all the air was heavy with the perfume of the blooming holly, mornings of music from a thousand throats inspired by “the new wine of the year.” At such times one realizes the force of these two lines from Richard Hovey:
Make me over, Mother April,
When the sap begins to stir.
James Stephen Compton.