Setophaga tigrina
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
♂ Adult male.– Crown blackish; patch back of eye orange-brown or chestnut; back streaked with black; white patch on the wing; rump yellow; under parts yellow, streaked with black.
♀ Adult female.– Upper parts gray; rump yellowish; under parts white, tinged with yellowish and streaked with dusky brown; white wing-bar very narrow.
The Cape May Warbler is a very rare migrant through New York and New England, generally occurring only when the other migrating warblers are unusually abundant. It should be looked for in the height of the spring migration, about the middle of May, and again late in August and September. It is probably less rare in western New England, and is reported as tolerably common in the fall at Sing Sing (Chapman). From 1871 to 1875 it bred “really abundantly in the coniferous forests about Lake Umbagog in western Maine” (Brewster), but is now rarely found breeding even in northern New England.
The song resembles the Black-poll’s quite closely; it has been described as peculiarly “faint and listless, monotonous zee-zee-zee-zee,” , “- sometimes with three zees, sometimes with four, but always in an unhurried monotone” (Torrey).
A male in spring plumage could be confused only with the Black and Yellow Warbler [Magnolia Warbler], from which its black crown and orange-brown ear-coverts should distinguish it.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)