Migrations -- May. September. Common summer resident.
"Given a piece of marshy ground with an abundance of skunk cabbage and a
fairly dense growth of saplings, and near by a tangle of green brier and
blackberry, and you will be pretty sure to have it tenanted by a pair of
yellowthroats," says Dr. Abbott, who found several of their nests in
skunk-cabbage plants, which he says are favorite cradles. No animal cares to
touch this plant if it can be avoided; but have the birds themselves no sense
of smell?
Before and after the nesting season these active birds, plump of form, elegant
of attire, forceful, but not bold, enter the scrubby pastures near our houses
and the shrubbery of old- fashioned, overgrown gardens, and peer out at the
human wanderer therein with a charming curiosity. The bright eyes of the male
masquerader shine through his black mask, where he intently watches you from
the tangle of syringa and snowball bushes; and as he flies into the laburnum
with its golden chain of blossoms that pale before the yellow of his throat
and breast, you are so impressed with his grace and elegance that you follow
too audaciously, he thinks, and off he goes. And yet this is a bird that seems
to delight in being pursued. It never goes so far away that you are not
tempted to follow it, though it be through dense undergrowth and swampy
thickets, and it always gives you just glimpse enough of its beauties and
graces before it flies ahead, to invite the hope of a closer inspection next
time.
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