Setophaga magnolia
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
Other names: Black and Yellow Warbler
♂Adult male.— Head ashy; cheeks and back black; large patch of white on the wing; all the tail-feathers tipped with black for some distance, all but the central ones white above the tips; rump yellow; under parts yellow; breast and sides heavily streaked with black.
♀Adult female.– Similar, but duller.
Immature.— Upper parts gray; back greenish in strong light; rump and under parts yellow; tail as in adult.
Nest, from three to six feet up, in coniferous trees.
Eggs, white, marked with brown at the larger end.
The Black and Yellow Warbler is a migrant through southern New York and New England, common in western New England and in the Hudson Valley, fairly common in eastern New England. It arrives about the tenth of May, passes north before the end of that month, and returns in September, and early October. On migration the Black and Yellow seems to prefer evergreens, but when abundant, it is found in all suitable places. It is a common summer resident in the Canadian Zone, from the edge of the spruce belt northward. It delights in the pasture spruces, the thick growth of healthy young trees, whose lower branches sweep the hillsides; but it will live in almost any growth that contains spruce, even high up the mountain-sides.
The song is as characteristic a sound of the smaller patches of spruce as that of the Yellow-rump is of the more extensive tracts. Generally it suggests the syllables weely, weely, wichy, with a rising inflection at the close, but there are several variations, which can be learned only after long practice. The song generally has more character than that of the Yellow-rump. The alarm-note is a rather sharp chip; the bird has other short notes, one of which is a tizic, resembling the song of the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, but thinner and drier (F. H. Allen).
The Prairie, the Canada, and the Cape May are the other warblers whose yellow under parts are streaked with black. Neither the Prairie nor the Canada shows white on the wing: the Prairie has no ashy-gray or black on the upper parts; the Canada has no white in the tail. A study, too, of [their Figures], will show the difference in the pattern of black and yellow. The much rarer Cape May, which, like the Black and Yellow, has a yellow rump and white on the wing, may be distinguished by the black crown. In all plumages the tail of the Black and Yellow is a good field-mark; even when closed it shows white halfway down, and extensive black tips.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)