Length: About 5½ inches.
Male: Forehead, cheeks, breast, and belly yellow; back of crown and throat black, the two dark areas united by a black line; mask yellow; back and rump olive; wings and tail a dark grayish-olive; the outer tail-feathers largely white on their inner webs.
Female: Similar to male, but without the black hood; dark edge to crown; breast faintly washed with black.
Song: E. H. Eaton in his “Birds of New York” writes: “The song of this warbler is one of the few which the author can hear with perfect distinctness and enjoy.” He adds that it is described by Langille as follows: “che-reek, che-reek, che-reek, chi-de-ee, the first three with a loud, bell-like ring, the rest much accelerated with a falling inflection.”
Habitat: Trees of deep woods.
Range: Eastern United States, west to the Plains, north and east to southern Michigan and Ontario, western and southeastern New York, and southern New England; in winter, West Indies, eastern Mexico, Central America, and Panama.
This warbler looks as though it had nearly divided a large hood,—had slipped one half of it back on its head like a calash, and allowed the other half to remain under its chin. It is easy to identify by its appearance and its song, and its habit of living in the lower parts of trees.
Eaton says: “The nest of the Hooded Warbler is usually placed in a low sapling or bush from 1 to 3 feet from the ground. In my experience it is the easiest of all the warbler nests to find. Wherever I have noticed a Hooded warbler singing in a patch of woodland, I have been very successful in locating the nest by placing my eye close to the ground and looking through the shrubbery from below the cover of the undergrowth. Then the nest will almost surely be seen if one is within a few rods, appearing like a bunch of leaves a short distance above the ground.”
