[Illustration: BLACK-POLL WARBLER. (Dendroica striata.) Life-size. FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. CHICAGO COLORTYPE CO.]
THE BLACK-POLL WARBLER. (_Dendroica striata._)
Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? Ah, why, Thou, too, whose song first told us of the spring, Whither away? —Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Few birds have a wider and more extended range than the Black-poll Warbler. Wintering in the southern United States, Central America and the northern part of South America, they move northward in the spring, reaching Greenland and Alaska in June. Their range extends to the westward as far as the Rocky Mountains. Their breeding range is nearly confined to the regions north of the United States.
This little bird which travels so extensively is a little later than many of the warblers in arriving at its summer home, but it seems to waste little time on the journey, as it flies rapidly and stops but little to search for food. These words of the poet,
“And warblers, full of life and song— All moving swiftly on their way,”
truthfully illustrate the flight of the Black-poll in its spring migration.
This species exhibits habits similar to those of the flycatchers and “may be considered as occupying an intermediate station between the flycatchers and warblers, having the manner of the former and the bill partially of the latter.” There is no better illustration of the saying that “The nice gradations by which nature passes from one species to another, even in this department of the great chain of beings, will forever baffle all the artificial rules and systems of man.”
The Black-polls are at home not only in the woods but also in the tops of the tallest trees. They prefer those forests that border on water courses or swamps where, flying from branch to branch they quickly catch the winged insects with a snap of their bills not unlike that of the flycatchers. Like the flycatchers, too, the color of their plumage is beautifully adapted to obscuring them in their dark green foliage retreats.
Standing on the very tip of some evergreen tree, “the chaste little figure striped in half mourning and capped in jet-black,” will burst out in a happy song and then quickly fly into the dark recesses of the forest.