Length	4 to 4.75 inches
Male	Lead-colored above; brownish on wings and tail. Head, neck, and stripe passing through eye to shoulder, black. Frontlet, chin, and shoulders white; also a white stripe over eye, meeting on brow. Under parts light, rusty red. Tail feathers barred with white near end, and tipped with pale brown.
Female	Has crown of brownish black, and a lighter underside than the male.
Range	Northern parts of North America. Not often seen south of the most northerly States.
Migrations	November. April. Common Winter resident.

The brighter coloring of this tiny, hardy bird distinguishes the Red-Breasted Nuthatch from the larger White-Breasted Nuthatch, with whom it is usually seen, for the winter birds have a delightfully social manner. A colony of these free spirits is apt to contain not only both kinds of nuthatches and chickadees, but kinglets and brown creepers as well.

The Red-Breasted Nuthatch shares the family habit of walking about the trees, head downward, and running along the under side of limbs like a fly. By Thanksgiving Day the "quank! quank!" of the White-Breasted species is answered by the "tai-tai-tait!" of the Red-Breasted cousin in the orchard, where the family party is celebrating with an elaborate menu of slugs, insects' eggs, and oily seeds from the evergreen trees.

For many years this Red-Breasted Nuthatch, a more northern species than the White-Breasted bird, was thought to be only a spring and autumn visitor, but latterly it is credited with habits like its congener's in nearly every particular.

NORTHERN PARULA
(Compsothlypis americana) Wood Warbler family
Called also: BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WARBLER

Length	4.5 to 4.75 inches
Male	Slate-colored above, with a greenish-yellow or bronze patch in the middle of the back. Chin, throat, and breast yellow. A black, bluish, or rufous band across the breast. Underneath white, sometimes marked with rufous on sides, but these markings are variable. Wings have two white patches; outer tail feathers have white patch near the end.
Female	Similar to the male, but lacking the black, bluish, or rufous band across the breast.
Range	Eastern North America. Winters from Florida southward.
Migrations	April. October. Summer resident.

Through an open window of an apartment in the very heart of New York City, a Northern Parula warbler flew this spring of 1897, surely the daintiest, most exquisitely beautiful bird visitor that ever voluntarily lodged between two brick walls.

A number of such airy, tiny beauties flitting about among the blossoms of the shrubbery on a bright May morning and swaying on the slenderest branches with their inimitable grace, is a sight that the memory should retain into old age.

Northern Parulas seem the very embodiment of life, joy, beauty, grace; of everything lovely that birds by any possibility could be. Apparently they are wafted about the garden; they fly with no more effort than a dainty lifting of the wings, as if to catch the breeze, that seems to lift them as it might a bunch of thistledown.

These Northern Parulas go through a great variety of charming postures as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects to raise its pretty head and trill a short and wiry song.

But the Northern Parula does not remain long about the gardens and orchards, though it will not forsake us altogether for the Canadian forests, where most of its relatives pass the summer. It retreats only to the woods near the water, if may be, or to just as close a counterpart of a swampy southern woods, where the Spanish or Usnea "moss" drapes itself over the cypresses, as it can find here at the north. Its rarely [found,] beautiful nest, that hangs suspended from a slender branch very much like the Baltimore oriole's, is so woven and festooned with this moss that its concealment is perfect.

CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER
(Dendroica pennsylvanica) Wood Warbler family
AKA: BLOODY-SIDED WARBLER

Length	5 inches
Male	Top of head and streaks in wings yellow. A black line running through the eye and round back of crown, and a black spot in front of eye, extending to cheeks. Ear coverts, chin, and underneath white. Back greenish gray and slate, streaked with black. Sides of bird chestnut. Wings, streaked with black and yellow, also have yellowish-white bars. Very dark tail with white patches on inner vanes of the outer quills.
Female	Similar, but duller. Chestnut sides are scarcely apparent.
Range	Eastern North America, from Manitoba and Labrador to the tropics, where it winters.
Migrations	May. September. Summer resident, most common in migrations.

In the Alleghanies, and from New Jersey and Illinois northward, the restless Chestnut-Sided Warbler nests in the bushy borders of woodlands and the undergrowth of the woods, for which he forsakes our gardens and orchards after a very short visit in May.

While hopping over the ground catching ants, of which this warbler seems to be inordinately fond, or flitting actively about the shrubbery after grubs and insects, we may note his coat of many colors -- patchwork in which nearly all the warbler colors are curiously combined.

With drooped wings that often conceal the bird's chestnut sides, which are his chief distinguishing mark, the Chestnut-Sided Warbler hunts incessantly. Here in the garden he is as refreshingly indifferent to your interest in him as later in his breeding haunts he is shy and distrustful. His song is bright and animated, like that of the yellow warbler.

GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER
(Helminthophila chrysoptera) Wood Warbler family

Length	5 inches
Male	Yellow crown and yellow patches on the wings. Upper parts are bluish gray, sometimes tinged with green hue. Black stripe through the eye and throat. Sides of head chin, and line over the eye white. Underneath white, grayish on sides. A few white markings on outer tail feathers.
Female	Crown duller; gray with some olive where male is black. Upper parts and grayer underneath.
Range	From Canadian border to Central America, where it winters.
Migrations	May. September. Summer resident.

After one has seen a Golden-Winged Warbler fluttering hither and thither about the shrubbery of a park within sight and sound of a great city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it.

Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the Golden-Winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather misleading name he bears. But, then, most warblers' names are misleading. They serve their best purpose in cultivating patience and other gentle virtues in the novice.

Such habits and choice of haunts that characterize the Blue-Winged warbler are also the Gold-Winged Warbler's traits. But their voices are quite different, the former bird's is sharp and metallic, while the latter's " zee, zee, zee" comes more lazily and without accent.

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER
(Dendroica coronata) Wood Warbler family
AKA: MYRTLE WARBLER; MYRTLE BIRD

Length	5 to 5.5 inches
Male	In summer plumage: A yellow patch on top of head, lower back, and either side of the breast. Upper parts bluish slate, streaked with black. Upper breast black; throat white; all other under parts whitish, streaked with black. Two white wing bars, and tail quills have white spots near the tip. In winter: Upper parts olive-brown, streaked with black; the yellow spot on lower back the only yellow mark remaining. Wing-bars grayish.
Female	Resembles male in winter plumage.
Range	Eastern North America. Occasional on Pacific slope. Summers from Minnesota and northern New England northward to Fur Countries. Winters from Middle States south ward into Central America; a few often remaining at the northern United States all winter.
Migrations	April. October. November. Also, but more rarely, a winter resident.

The first of the warblers to arrive in the spring and the last to leave us in the autumn, some even remaining throughout the northern winter, the Yellow-Rumped Warbler is the most familiar of its kin.

Though we become acquainted with it chiefly in the migrations, this warbler impresses us by its numbers rather than by any gorgeousness of attire. The four yellow spots on crown, lower back, and sides are its distinguishing marks; and in the autumn these marks have dwindled to only one, that on the lower back or rump. The great difficulty experienced in identifying any warbler is in its restless habit of flitting about.

For a few days in early May we are forcibly reminded of the Florida peninsula, which fairly teems with Yellow-Rumped Warblers; they become almost superabundant, a distraction during the precious days when the rarer species are quietly slipping by, not to return again for a year, perhaps longer, for some warblers are notoriously irregular in their routes north and south, and never return by the way they traveled in the spring.

In autumn, when the Yellow-Rumped Warblers return after a busy enough summer passed in Canadian nurseries, they chiefly haunt those regions where juniper and bay-berries abound. These latter (Myrica cerifera), or the myrtle wax-berries, as they are sometimes called, are the bird's favorite food. Wherever the supply of these berries is sufficient to last through the winter, there it may be found foraging in the scrubby bushes.

Sometimes driven by cold and hunger from the fields, this hardiest member of a family that properly belongs to the tropics, seeks shelter and food close to the outbuildings on the farm.

LEAST FLYCATCHER
(Empidonax minimus) Flycatcher family
AKA: CHEBEC

Length	5 to 5.5 inches
Male	Gray or olive-gray above, paler on wings and lower part of back, and a more distinct olive-green on head. Underneath grayish white, sometimes faintly suffused with pale yellow. Wings have whitish bars. White eye-ring. Lower half of bill horn color.
Female	Female is slightly more yellowish underneath.
Range	Eastern North America, from tropics northward to Quebec.
Migrations	May. September. Common summer resident.

This, the smallest member of the Flycatcher family, takes the place of the more southerly Acadian flycatcher, throughout New England and the region of the Great Lakes. But, unlike his Southern relative, the Least Flycatcher prefers orchards and gardens close to our homes for his hunting grounds rather than the wet recesses of the forests.

"Che-bec, che-bec", the diminutive olive- gray colored sprite calls out from the orchard between his aerial sallies after the passing insects that have been attracted by the decaying fruit, and chebec is the name by which many New Englanders know him.

While giving this characteristic call-note, with drooping jerking tail, trembling wings, and uplifted parti-colored bill, the little Least Flycatcher looks unnerved and limp by the effort it has cost him. But in the next instant a gnat flies past. How quickly the bird recovers itself, and charges full-tilt at his passing dinner!

The sharp click of his little bill proves that he has not missed his aim; and after careering about in the air another minute or two, looking for more game to snap up on the wing, he will return to the same perch and take up his familiar refrain. Without hearing this call-note one might often mistake the bird for either the wood pewee or the phoebe, for all the three are similarly clothed and have many traits in common. The slightly large size of the phoebe and pewee is not always apparent when they are seen perching on the trees.

Unlike the "tuft of hay" to which the Acadian flycatcher's nest has been likened, the least flycatcher's home is a neat, substantial cup-shaped cradle softly lined with down or horsehair, and placed generally in an upright crotch of a tree, well above the ground.

BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE
(Parus atricapillus) Titmouse family
AKA: BLACK-CAPPED TITMOUSE; BLACK-CAP TIT

Bird Photo - Black Capped Chickadee Picture

Length	5 to 5.5 inches
Male	Not crested. Crown and nape and throat black. Above gray, slightly tinged with brown. A white space, beginning at base of bill, extends backwards, widening over cheeks and upper part of breast, forming a sort of collar that almost surrounds neck. Underneath dirty white, with pale rusty brown wash on sides. Wings and tail gray with white edgings. Plumage downy.
Female	Same as male.
Range	Eastern North America. North of the Carolinas to Labrador. Does not migrate in the North.
Migrations	Late September. May. Winter resident; permanent resident in northern parts of the United States.

No "fair weather friend" is the jolly little chickadee. In the depth of the autumn equinoctial storm the Black-Capped Chickadee returns to the tops of the trees close by the house, where, through the sunshine, snow, and tempest of the entire winter, you may hear its cheery, irrepressible chickadee-dee-dee-dee or day-day-day as it swings Around the dangling cones of the evergreens. It fairly overflows with good spirits, and is never more contagiously gay than in a snowstorm.

So active, so friendly and cheering, what would the long northern winters be like without this lovable little neighbor?

Black-capped Chickadees serve a more utilitarian purpose, however, than bracing faint-hearted spirits. "There is no bird that compares with it in destroying the female canker-worm moths and their eggs," writes a well-known entomologist.

He calculates that as a chickadee destroys about 5,500 eggs in one day, it will eat 138,750 eggs in the twenty-five days it takes the canker-worm moth to crawl up the trees. The moral that it pays to attract Black-Capped Chickadees about your home by feeding them in winter is obvious. Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, in her delightful and helpful book Birdcraft, tells us how she makes a sort of a bird-hash of finely minced raw meat, waste canary-seed, buckwheat, and cracked oats, which she scatters in a sheltered spot for all the winter birds. The way this is consumed leaves no doubt of its popularity. A raw bone, hung from an evergreen limb, is equally appreciated.

Friendly as the chickadee is and Dr. Abbott declares it the tamest bird we have, it prefers well-timbered districts, especially where there are red-bud trees, at nesting season. It is very often clever enough to leave the labor of hollowing out a nest in the tree-trunk to the woodpecker or nuthatch - whose old homes it readily appropriates - or, when these birds object, a knot-hole or a hollow fence-rail answers every purpose. Here, in the summer woods, when family cares beset it, a plaintive, minor whistle replaces the chickadee-dee-dee that Thoreau likens to "silver tinkling" as he heard it on a frosty morning.

"Piped a tiny voice near by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry
Chick-chickadeedee! saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said, 'Good-day, good Sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces.'"
-- Emerson.

BAY-BREASTED WARBLER
(Dendroica castanea) Wood Warbler family

Length	5.25 to 5.75 inches
Male	Crown, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides dull chestnut. Forehead, sides of head, and cheeks black. Above olive-gray, streaked with black. Underneath buff colored. Two white wing-bars. Outer tail quills with white patches on tips. Cream white patch on either side of neck.
Female	Has more greenish-olive above.
Range	Eastern North America, from Hudson's Bay to Central America. Nests north of the United States. Winters in tropical limit of range.
Migrations	May. September. Rare migrant.

The chestnut breast of this capricious little visitor makes the Bay-Breasted Warbler look like a diminutive robin. In spring, when these warblers are said to take a more easterly route than the one they choose in autumn to return by to Central America, they may be so suddenly abundant that the fresh green trees and shrubbery of the garden will contain a dozen of the busy little hunters.

Another season the Bay-Breasted Warbler may pass northward either by another route or leave your garden unvisited; and perhaps the people in the very next town may be counting your rare bird common, while it is simply perverse.

Whether common or rare, before your acquaintance has had time to ripen into friendship, away go the freaky little creatures to nest in the tree-tops of the Canadian coniferous forests.

BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER
(Dendroica caerulescens) Wood Warbler family

Length	5.3 inches
Male	Slate-color, not blue above; lightest on forehead and darkest on lower back. Wings and tail edged with bluish. Cheeks, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides black. Breast and underneath white. White spots on wings, and a little white on tail.
Female	Olive-green above; underneath soiled yellow. Wing-spots inconspicuous. Tail generally has a faint bluish tinge.
Range	Eastern North America, from Labrador to tropics, where it winters.
Migrations	May. September. Usually a migrant only in the United States.

Whoever looks for this beautifully marked warbler among the bluebirds, will wish that the man who named him had possessed a truer eye for color. But if the name so poorly fits the bright slate-colored male, how grieved must be his little olive-and-yellow mate to answer to the name of Black-Throated Blue Warbler when she has neither a black throat nor a blue feather! It is not easy to distinguish her as she flits about the twigs and leaves of the garden in May or early autumn, except as she is seen in company with her husband, whose name she has taken with him for better or for worse. The white spot on the wings should always be looked for to positively identify this bird.

Before flying up to a twig to peck off the insects, Black-Throated Blue Warblers have a pretty vireo trick of cocking their heads on one side to investigate the quantity hidden underneath the leaves. They seem less nervous and more deliberate than many of their restless family.

Most warblers go over the Canada border to nest, but there are many records of the nests of this species in the Alleghanies as far south as Georgia, in the Catskills, in Connecticut, northern Minnesota and Michigan. Laurel thickets and moist undergrowth of woods in the United States, and more commonly pine woods in Canada, are the favorite nesting haunts for this bird.

A sharp "zip, zip", like some midsummer insect's noise, is the bird's call-note, but its love-song, "zee, zee, zee", or "twee, twea, twea-e-e", as one authority writes it, is only rarely heard in the migrations. The Black-Throated Blue Warbler has a languid, drawling little strain, with an upward slide that is easily drowned in the full bird chorus of May.

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH
(Sitta carolinensis) Nuthatch family
AKA: TREE-MOUSE; DEVIL DOWNHEAD

Length	5.5 to 6 inches
Male	Upper parts slate-color. Top of head and nape black. Wings dark slate, edged with black, that fades to brown. Tail feathers brownish black, with white bars. Sides of head and underneath white, shading to pale reddish under the tail. Body flat and compact. Bill longer than head.
Female	Similar to the male, but head coloration is flatter gray.
Range	British provinces to Mexico. Eastern United States.
Migrations	October. April. Common resident, mostly in winter.

"Shrewd little haunter of woods all gray,
Whom I meet on my walk of a winter day --
You're busy inspecting each cranny and hole
In the ragged bark of yon hickory bole;
You intent on your task, and I on the law
Of your wonderful head and gymnastic claw!

The woodpecker well may despair of this feat --
Only the fly with you can compete!
So much is clear; but I fain would know
How you can so reckless and fearless go,
Head upward, head downward, all one to you,
Zenith and nadir the same in your view?"
-- Edith M. Thomas.

Could a dozen lines well contain a fuller description or more apt characterization of a bird than these "To a Nuthatch"?

With more artless inquisitiveness than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. That's the personality behind the White-Breasted Nuthatch.

If there is too much snow on the upper side of a branch, watch how the nuthatch runs along underneath it like a fly, busily tapping the bark, or adroitly breaking the decayed bits with his bill, as he searches for the spider's eggs, larvae, etc., hidden there; yet somehow, between mouthfuls, managing to call out his cheery quank! quank! hank! hank!

Tufted Titmice and both Nuthatches, which have many similar characteristics, are often seen in the most friendly hunting parties on the same tree. A pine woods is their dearest delight. There, as the mercury goes down, their spirits only seem to go up higher. In the spring they have been thought by many to migrate in flocks, whereas they are only retreating with their relations away from the haunts of men to the deep, cool woods, where they nest. With infinite patience the nuthatch excavates a hole in a tree, lining it with feathers and moss, and often depositing as many as ten white eggs speckled with red and lilac) for a single brood.

CHIMNEY SWIFT
(Chaetura pelagica) Swift family
AKA: CHIMNEY SWALLOW; AMERICAN SWIFT

Length	5.5 to 6 inches
Male	Deep sooty gray; throat of a trifle lighter gray. Wings extend an inch and a half beyond the even tail, which has sharply pointed and very elastic quills, that serve as props. Feet are muscular, and have exceedingly sharp claws.
Female	As male.
Range	Peculiar to North America east of the Rockies, and from Labrador to Panama.
Migrations	April. September or October. Common summer resident.

The Chimney Swift is, properly speaking, not a swallow at all, though chimney swallow is its more popular name. Rowing towards the roof of your house, as if it used first one wing, then the other, its flight, while swift and powerful, is stiff and mechanical, unlike the swallow's, and its entire aspect suggests a bat.

The nighthawk and whippoorwill are the Chimney Swifts relatives, with no resemblance whatsoever - especially in its nocturnal habits.

So much fault has been found with the misleading names of many birds, it is pleasant to record the fact that the name of the Chimney Swift is everything it ought to be. No other birds can surpass and few can equal it in its powerful flight, sometimes covering a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, it is said, and never resting except in its roosting places (hollow trees or chimneys of dwellings), where it does not perch, but rather clings to the sides with its sharp claws, partly supported by its sharper tail. Audubon tells of a certain plane tree in Kentucky where he counted over nine thousand of these Chimney Swifts clinging to the hollow trunk.

Their nest, which is a loosely woven twig lattice, made of twigs of trees, which the birds snap off with their beaks and carry in their beaks, is glued with the bird's saliva or tree-gum into a solid structure, and firmly attached to the inside of chimneys, or hollow trees where there are no houses about. Two broods in a season usually emerge from the pure white, elongated eggs.

What a twittering there is in the chimney that the swifts appropriate after the winter fires have died out! Instead of the hospitable column of smoke curling from the top, a cloud of sooty birds wheels and floats above it. A sound as of distant thunder fills the chimney as a host of these birds, startled, perhaps, by some indoor noise, whirl their way upward. Woe betide the happy colony if a sudden cold snap in early summer necessitates the starting of a fire on the hearth by the unsuspecting householder! The glue being melted by the fire, "down comes the cradle, babies and all" into the glowing embers. A prolonged, heavy rain also causes their nests to loosen their hold and fall with the soot to the bottom.

Thrifty New England housekeepers claim that bedbugs, commonly found on bats, infest the bodies of swifts also, which is one reason why wire netting is stretched across the chimney tops before the birds arrive from the South.

DARK-EYED JUNCO
(Junco hyemalis) Finch family
AKA: SNOWBIRD; SLATE-COLORED SNOWBIRD; JUNCO

Small gray bird - Junco - picture

Length	5.5 to 6.5 inches
Male	Upper parts slate-colored; darkest on head and neck, which are sometimes almost black and marked like a cowl. Gray on breast, like a vest. Underneath white. Several outer tall feathers white, easily seen in flight.
Female	Lighter gray, inclining to brown.
Range	North America. Not common in warm latitudes. Nests in the Catskills and northern New England.
Migrations	September. April. Common winter resident.

"Leaden skies above; snow below," is Mr. Parkhurst's suggestive description of this rather timid little neighbor, that is only starved into familiarity.

When the snow has buried seed and berries, a flock of Dark-Eyed Juncos, mingling sociably with the sparrows and chickadees about the kitchen door, will pick up scraps of food with an intimacy quite touching in a bird naturally rather shy. Here we can readily distinguish these "little gray-robed monks and nuns," as Miss Florence Merriam calls them.

Dark-Eyed Juncos are trim, sprightly, sleek, and even natty; their dispositions are genial and vivacious, not quarrelsome, like their sparrow cousins, and what is perhaps best about them, they are birds we may surely depend upon seeing in the winter months. A few come forth in September, migrating at night from the deep woods of the north, where they have nested and molted during the summer; but not until frost has sharpened the air are large numbers of them seen.

Rejoicing in winter, Dark-Eyed Juncos nevertheless do not revel in the deep and fierce arctic blasts, as the Snow Buntings do, but take good care to avoid the open pastures before the hard storms overtake them.

Early in the spring their song is sometimes heard before they leave us to woo and to nest in the north. Mr. Bicknell describes it as "a crisp call-note, a simple trill, and a faint, whispered warble, usually much broken, but not without sweetness."