BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW AND ORANGE
Yellow-throated Vireo American Goldfinch Evening Grosbeak Blue-winged Warbler Canadian Warbler Hooded Warbler Kentucky Warbler Magnolia Warbler Mourning Warbler Nashville Warbler Pine Warbler Prairie Warbler Wilson's Warbler or Blackcap Yellow Warbler or Summer Yellowbird Yellow Redpoll Warbler Yellow-breasted Chat Maryland Yellowthroat Blackburnian Warbler Redstart Baltimore Oriole Look also among the Yellowish Olive Birds in the preceding group;and among the Brown Birds for the Meadowlark and Flicker. See also Parula Warbler (Slate) and Yellow-bellied Woodpecker (Black and White).
BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY YELLOW AND ORANGE
YELLOW-THROATED VIREO (Vireo flavifrons) Vireo or Greenlet family Length -- 5.5. to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Lemon-yellow on throat, upper breast; line around the eye and forehead. Yellow, shading into olive-green, on head, back, and shoulders. Underneath white. Tail dark brownish, edged with white. Wings a lighter shade, with two white bands across, and some quills edged with white.
Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Rockies. Winters in the tropics.
Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant; more rarely resident.
This is undoubtedly the beauty of the vireo family -- a group of neat, active, stoutly built, and vigorous little birds of yellow, greenish, and white plumage; birds that love the trees, and whose feathers reflect the coloring of the leaves they hide, hunt, and nest among. "We have no birds," says Bradford Torrey, "so unsparing of their music: they sing from morning till night."The yellow-throated vireo partakes of all the family characteristics, but, in addition to these, it eclipses all its relatives in the brilliancy of its coloring and in the art of nest-building, which it has brought to a state of hopeless perfection. No envious bird need try to excel the exquisite finish of its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging running water that threatens too precipitous a bath to tempt the young climbers.
However common in the city parks and suburban gardens this bird may be during the migrations, it delights in a secluded retreat overgrown with tall trees and near a stream, such as is dear to the solitary vireo as well when the nesting time approaches. High up in the trees we hear its rather sad, persistent strain, that is more in harmony with the dim forest than with the gay flower garden, where, if the truth must be told, its song is both monotonous and depressing. Mr. Bicknell says it is the only vireo that sings as it flies.
AMERICAN GOLDFINCH (Spinus tristis) Finch family Called also: WILD CANARY; YELLOWBIRD; THISTLE BIRDLength -- 5 to 5.2 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow.
Male -- In summer plumage: Bright yellow, except on crown of head, frontlet, wings, and tail, which are black. Whitish markings on wings give effect of bands. Tail with white on inner webs. In winter plumage: Head yellow-olive; no frontlet;black drab, with reddish tinge; shoulders and throat yellow;soiled brownish white underneath.
Female -- Brownish olive above, yellowish white beneath.
Range -- North America, from the tropics to the Fur Countries and westward to the Columbia River and California. Common throughout its range.
Migrations -- May-October. Common summer resident, frequently Seen throughout the winter as well.
An old field, overgrown with thistles and tall, stalky wild flowers, is the paradise of the goldfinches, summer or winter. Here they congregate in happy companies while the sunshine and goldenrod are as bright as their feathers, and cling to the swaying slender stems that furnish an abundant harvest, daintily. lunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at the mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michaelmas daisies;or, when snow covers the same field with a glistening crust, above which the brown stalks offer only a meagre dinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in winter feathers, cling to the swaying stems with cheerful fortitude.
At your approach, the busy company rises on the wing, and with peculiar, wavy flight rise and fall through the air, marking each undulation with a cluster of notes, sweet and clear, that come floating downward from the blue ether, where the birds seem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike.
In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has been drab and brown through the winter months, is moulted or shed -- a change that transforms the bird from a sombre Puritan into the gayest of cavaliers, and seems to wonderfully exalt his spirits. He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody that might be the outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the bird's happy heart.
With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, it is small wonder that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and caged, however inferior their song may be to the European species recently introduced into this country.
