This is the southern form with the characteristics and mannerisms of the Northern Parula. About the only difference in its habits is the fact that it invariably selects drifts of Usnea for its home, probably because where it lives there is plenty of that moss.
Southeastern United States from the District of Columbia south to Alabama and Florida.
This sprightly little blue-gray bird, with its back semicircle of brassy yellow, is one of the first Warblers I identified in the flush of my youthful ornithological enthusiasm.
I was less than 10 years old when one Spring day I called my father to the window of our house near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, to show him one of these little fellows. I remember he called it a “Blue Yellowback Warbler."
They are as cheerful and active as the rest of the family and I have frequently seen them utter their grasshopper sparrow-like buzz with a billful of bugs!
Here in Dutchess County (New York) they go thru every year with extraordinary regularity, from the tenth to the middle of May, on their way to their breeding grounds, and they take a generous toll of the insect population.
Eastern United States, West to Mississippi River, north to Ontario, northern Minnesota and Cape Breton Island.
