Setophaga americana
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
♂ Adult male.— Upper parts and sides of head grayish-blue, with a patch of greenish-yellow in the middle of the back; wing-bars white; throat and breast yellow, washed across the upper breast with chocolate-brown; belly white.
♀ Adult female.— Upper parts as in male; breast without the brown band.
Nest, of usnea, generally in a pendent bunch of the same moss.
Eggs, white, speckled with reddish-brown about the larger end.
The Parula Warbler breeds in swamps or deep moist woods, wherever the trees are hung with the long gray usnea moss. It is, therefore, found in summer in the white cedar swamps of Cape Cod, southern Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and throughout the damp forests of Berkshire County, Mass., and northern New York and New England. In the vicinity of New York city, however, and throughout most of southern New England, including the neighborhood of Boston, it occurs chiefly as a migrant. It is often very common throughout May, and again in late September and early October. It may then be seen wherever migrating warblers are found, – in the village streets, about houses, and along the edges of streams or swamps. It generally keeps well up in the tops of trees, where it often clings like a Chickadee to the ends of small twigs. Like many of our other warblers the Parula has two songs: one is easy to learn, a series of zee-like notes, which rise quickly and end in a little zip, as if one were winding up a little watch; the other, though of a less distinctive form, has the same hoarse quality.
This is our smallest warbler, and should be confused with no other bird, if one can get a view of the bluish head, the yellow throat, and white wing-bars.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)