Читать книгу Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 1 [January 1901] - Various - Страница 6

Dr. Robert Ridgway, in the Ornithology of Illinois, uses the following words in speaking of that family of birds called the American Warblers (Mniotilidae), “No group of birds more deserves the epithet of pretty than the Warblers; Tanagers are splendid; Humming-birds are refulgent; other kinds are brilliant, gaudy or magnificent, but Warblers alone are pretty in the proper and full sense of that term.”

As they are full of nervous activity, and are “eminently migratory birds,” they seem to flit rather than fly through the United States as they pass northward in the spring to their breeding places, and southward in the fall to their winter homes among the luxuriant forests and plantations of the tropics. All the species are purely American, and as they fly from one extreme to the other of their migratory range they remain but a few days in any intermediate locality. Time seems to be an important matter with them. It would seem as if every moment of daylight was used in the gathering of food and the night hours in continuing their journey.

The American Warblers include more than one hundred species grouped in about twenty genera. Of these species nearly three-fourths are represented in North America at least as summer visitants, the remaining species frequenting only the tropics. Though woodland birds they exhibit many and widely separated modes of life, some of the species preferring only aquatic regions, while others seek drier soils. Some make their homes in shrubby places, while others are seldom found except in forests. As their food is practically confined to insects, they frequent our lawns and orchards during their migrations, when they fly in companies which may include several species. Mr. Chapman, in his Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, says, “Some species flit actively from branch to branch, taking their prey from the more exposed parts of the twigs and leaves; others are gleaners, and carefully explore the under surfaces of leaves or crevices in the bark; while several, like Flycatchers, capture a large part of their food on the wing.”

The Townsend’s Warbler is a native of Western North America, especially near the Pacific coast. Its range extends from Sitka on the north to Central America on the south, where it appears during the winter. In its migration it wanders as far east as Colorado. It breeds from the southern border of the United States northward, nesting in regions of cone-bearing trees. It is said that the nest of this Warbler is usually placed at a considerable height, though at times as low as from five to fifteen feet from the ground. The nest is built of strips of fibrous bark, twigs, long grasses and wool, compactly woven together. This is lined with hair, vegetable down and feathers.

The eggs are described as buffy white, speckled and spotted with reddish brown and lilac-gray, about three-fifths of an inch in length by about one-half of an inch in diameter.