Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/158

  Black-poll Warbler: Dendroica striata.


 * Length:
 * About 5.50 inches.


 * Male: 
 * Black cap, grayish white cheeks, general upper parts striped gray, black, and olive. Breast white, with black streaks. White spots on outer tail feathers; upper mandible brownish black, lower yellowish; feet flesh-coloured.


 * Female:
 * Crown and back, olive-green, faintly streaked with black. Paler than male all through.


 * Song:
 * Call note, "Screep,-screep." Torrey says that, short as the song is, it contains a perfect crescendo and a perfect decrescendo.


 * Season:
 * Late May and late October. One of the latest arrivals among the migrants.


 * Breeds:
 * From northern New England northward.


 * Nest:
 * In evergreens. Nest large for the size of the bird, as Mr. Brewster notes several nests 5 inches across and 8 inches deep. They are made of terminal shoots of conifers, lichens, rootlets, and sedges, lined with grass panicles


 * Eggs:
 * Not especially marked.


 * Range:
 * Eastern North America to the Rocky Mountains, north to

Greenland, the barren grounds, and Alaska. South in winter to northern South America.

The jolly Black-poll has all the vivacity and activity of a Flycatcher, and, in fact, Dr. Coues gives it credit for many of the Flycatcher's attributes, and says that it catches insects on the wing with the same ease as the Wood Pewee.

Some authorities say that the Black-poll climbs and walks about the trees in the manner of the Black and White Warbler. I do not think that it does this; for I watched a number of them at short range last spring, and while the birds seemed to creep, they really flew about by means of a short and rapid flip of the wings.

Their call notes, which were the only ones I heard, were very weak and scarcely distinguishable from other wood sounds, and I have often mistaken them for the creaking of a branch. Audubon says: ". . . its notes have no title to be called a song. They are shrill, and resemble the noise made by striking two small pebbles together more than any other sound I know."