Part 7

Thus, a fictional view of the turkey vulture and the less widespread black vulture. The turkey vulture summers up into Canada and permanently ranges the southern United States. It is a common sight along roadsides and sometimes above cities. These common carrion eaters are natural scavengers, and highly useful ones, but they are a little hard to admire except at a distance. A large bird, often more than 30 inches long and with great wingspread, they don’t need to be fed. Our driving habits and our careless disposal of garbage generally provide plenty of food for them.

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH (Sitta carolinensis)

With a length of 6 inches, this resident of the United States, southern Canada and Mexico might readily be mistaken by a casual observer for a small woodpecker. But its call—an oft-repeated “yank”—is very unwoodpecker-like. Also unlike either woodpeckers or creepers, it climbs downward head first as easily as upward, seeming to defy the laws of gravity. “Nuthatch” was suggested by its habit of wedging nuts in crevices of bark so as to break them open by blows from a sharp, strong bill. The white-breast gets its living from the trunks and branches of trees, over which it walks from daylight to dark. Insects and spiders constitute about half of its food. More than half of its vegetable food consists of acorns and other nuts or large seeds. It’s a bird of the wooded suburbs, and will feed at sheltered stations offering suet, sunflower seeds, or nuts.

WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW (Zonotrichia leucophrys)

From tail-tip to beak, this perky flyer is 7 inches long and looks like the white-throated sparrow, but the latter has a yellow spot beside its eyes. White-crown breeds in the high country of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Pacific coast; it winters in the southern half of the United States and in northern Mexico.

This beautiful sparrow is numerous in the West, but rather rare elsewhere, so watch for it carefully if you’re in the East, for it is shy and retiring there. But the white-crown is bolder and more conspicuous in the Far West, often frequenting gardens, parks, and yards. Like most sparrows, it is a seed eater by preference—it appears readily at sheltered feeding stations. Insects comprise less than 10 percent of its diet.

WOOD PEWEE (Contopus sp.)

The bird of this painting ranges from the east coast through the Mississippi Valley, where its range meets that of the western wood pewee. They are hard to tell apart visually, although the songs are quite different. Both species also look like eastern phoebes, so spotting this bird with assurance requires some study. The names of all these birds are based upon their calls, and all are flycatchers.

The pewees like groves of mixed trees, and at twilight the eastern species sings a plaintive whistled song that is longer and more varied than its daylight song. You are much more likely to see or hear these birds in outer suburbia housing areas than in the inner city or on shopping center parking lots, since they require tall trees and cannot be heard above traffic noises.

WOOD THRUSH (Hylocichla mustelina)

This bird is at least fairly common in suburban groves all over the eastern United States. Adults are a bit over 7 inches long and their song is like a flute phrase followed by a soft trill, heard usually at dawn or dusk.

There are a number of other common thrushes. The hermit has a wide range, summering up into mid-Canada and wintering in the southern United States and Mexico. Veery, Swainson’s, and gray-cheeked thrushes are also widespread. The wood thrush is the largest and probably the most citified, at least in terms of living in woody areas near cities. It is also the only one with a heavily spotted breast.

The nest is similar to a robin’s, but without so much mud, and is usually twenty-five feet or less from the ground in a tree or shrub.

YELLOWTHROAT (Geothlypis trichas)

This is a gay little warbler that is abundant, at least in summer, across the United States and most of Canada wherever there are moist shrubby areas. It’s a permanent resident in southernmost United States and northern Mexico—and north up the Pacific coast to San Francisco. The yellowthroat lives in shrubs in moist areas, showing its distinctive markings to passersby. The female doesn’t have a black mask, but otherwise looks much like the male.

These warblers nest on or near the ground in moist areas and eat mainly insects, including plant lice; don’t look for them in the tops of tall trees. Adults are about 5 inches long. There are, of course, a lot of warblers over the continent, but the yellowthroat is widely distributed and widely admired. Keep your wet areas if you want to keep yellowthroats around.

YELLOW WARBLER (Dendroica petechia)

Although similar to the goldfinch, this warbler lacks the black wings and tail. Its cheerful, bright call can be heard by urban dwellers from willows, small trees, and shrubs growing on wet grounds and in residential areas that contain an open growth of small ornamental trees.

A tropic winterer, he breeds from the tree limit in Canada to the southern states. When plagued by cowbirds laying eggs in its nest, this warbler builds a second nest on top of the first, completely covering the cowbird’s eggs, and any of its own in the bottom layer.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Publication information provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions only, delimited italicized text with underscores.