Setophaga pinus
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
♂ Adult male.– Upper parts with a strong greenish-yellow tinge in a good light; wing-bars whitish; throat and breast yellow, brightest on the throat; belly paler.
♀ Adult female.— Upper parts brownish with fainter greenish-yellow tinge; under parts grayish-white with a faint tinge of yellowish on the breast; wing-bars narrower, grayish.
Immature.— Similar to female, but without any yellowish tinge; wingbars very faint.
Nest, generally in pines, from twenty to fifty feet up.
Eggs, dull white, spotted with brown, chiefly about the larger end.
The Pine Warbler is a common summer resident of central New England and of parts of Long Island; in northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley, and in southern Connecticut it occurs only as a migrant. In the valleys of the Housatonic, Connecticut, and Merrimac, and in southern Maine it is found as far north as the pitch pine grows, but it also occurs sparingly near its northern limit in groves of tall white pine. It is the first warbler to arrive in spring, appearing early in April, and it lingers till the middle of October, singing freely again toward the end of its stay. In the spring, the bird often descends to the ground to feed, and it may in any case be more easily observed in the loose growing pitch pines than the equally common Black-throated Green Warbler in the dense white pines. The movements of the Pine Warbler are leisurely, and it stops continually to shake out the sweet trill which constitutes its song.
The song resembles in form the Chipping Sparrow’s and the Snowbird’s [Dark-eyed Junco], but is sweeter and less staccato than either of these songs; moreover, it is rarely heard outside of a pine grove. At the height of the breeding season the trill is occasionally followed by a few additional notes in a lower key.
The resemblance of the Pine Warbler in pattern of coloration to the Yellow-throated Vireo is discussed on the Vireo chapter. The dull colors of the female Pine Warbler make her one of the most difficult birds to recognize; the faint tinge of yellow on the breast is perceptible only at close range in good light, and the wing-bars are narrow and grayish. The ape of the bill, of course, indicates that she is a warbler; it is often only by a process of elimination that one discovers her identity. The young birds in autumn are even more non-committal.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)