Length: About 5 inches.

Male: A black crown and white cheeks, giving the effect of a black cap pulled down over the eyes; throat and belly white; back and sides gray, streaked with black; two white wing-bars; two outer tail-feathers with white spot near tip.

Female: Olive-green above, streaked with black; breast and sides with yellowish wash.

Range: Widely distributed; common in the East during migration. Breeds in the forests of Alaska and north-central Canada, in Michigan, northern Maine, and the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont.

Black-poll Warblers are similar in coloring to the black-and-white warblers, but are duller and less striking in appearance. In the breeding season, father, mother, and young differ in plumage, though a practiced eye may see resemblances, but in the fall they don coats so similar that they seem to have adopted a family costume.

The migration of black-poll warblers is interesting. Dr. Wells W. Cooke says: “All black-poll warblers winter in South America. Those that are to nest in Alaska strike straight across the Caribbean Sea to Florida and go northwestward to the Mississippi River. Then the direction changes and a course is laid almost due north to northern Minnesota, in order to avoid the treeless plains of North Dakota. But when the forests of the Saskatchewan are reached, the northwestern course is resumed, and, with a slight verging toward the west, is held until the nesting site in Alaska spruces is attained.”[141]