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That first hooded warbler that I discovered and identified in a near-by bushy field one Sunday morning shall I ever forget the thrill of delight it gave me? And when in August I went with three friends into the Adirondacks, no day or place or detention came amiss to me; new birds were calling and flitting on every hand; a new world was opened to me in the midst of the old.
I never saw people so afraid to raise a real family. If the Wrens didn't do better than that, I don't know what would become of us." You know Jenny usually has a family of six or eight. If there is one family of feathered friends which perplexes Peter Rabbit more than another, it is the Warbler family.
However, the warbler has one advantage he is able to perch with perfect security on a twig, an accomplishment that has not yet been attained by his little brown cousin.
For these reasons I pay but little attention to the warbler clan. Usually when I meet one of them, I am content to set him down as a warbler and let him depart in peace.
What an enigma the Tennessee warbler for a long time remained to me! Never still for a moment, yet so indistinctly marked that at a distance it looks like a dozen other birds one might name a veritable feathered rebus.
What a strange, composite creature he is! thrush, warbler, and sandpiper all in one; with such a bare-footed, bare-legged appearance, too, as if he must always be ready to wade; and such a Saint Vitus's dance! His must be a curious history. In particular, I should like to know the origin of his teetering habit, which seems to put him among the beach birds.
From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree. A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing a full hour.
A Massachusetts bird harrier boasts of his clutch of the egg's of that dainty little warbler, the blue yellow-back. One season he took two sets, the next five sets, the next four sets, besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets, and says he might have found more had he had more time. One season he took, in about twenty days, three from one tree.
His expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence so long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler? But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed, waits not upon novelties and rarities.
On this Fourth of July we were in search of a warbler, one of the most tantalizing, maddening pursuits a sensible human being can engage in.
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