Just west of Mt. Vernon on the old Bankhead Highway is a once ramshackle Civil War era home that has been lovingly restored to its former glory and perhaps then some.  The Henry Clay Thruston House was home to the tallest soldier in that war and is today home to the Bankhead Highway Visitor’s Center and the site of the Franklin County Historical Association’s Dupree Nature Trail.  

The house faces south toward the road and provides mute testimony to an earlier time—before the days of air conditioned houses—when folks longed for the cool nights of fall and relief from the oppressive heat.   If you haven’t made time to do so yet, an early morning stroll down the meandering trail while the air is still cool would be well worth your time.  It is the best time to be alone outdoors, before the sun burns off the morning dew and the day seems full of endless promise.   As any early riser will tell you, birds are most active then too. 

          As the days grow shorter, and the nights cooler, and September grows closer to October, a bird with a fondness for our favorite places falls out from the night sky and settles into the woods for the winter.   In Roger Tory Peterson’s famous field guides, first introduced in the 1930s, it was called Myrtle Warbler—because of its fondness for the small berries of the wax myrtle shrub.  Field guides today refer to it as the Yellow-rumped Warbler, but regardless, it is a special bird, and one with which you should become acquainted. You would be able to find this little gem here too, especially on the backside of the trail where it enters the woods.

In summer it dresses up in black and white with gray and yellow to breed in the vast boreal forests from the northeastern United States, across most of Canada all the way to Alaska.  It changes clothes, which is to say it molts its colorful feathers, before heading to the southern United States in the fall where it will spend the winter—and where few birds are more common. 

Although the leaves are still green, it is dun-colored when it arrives in Texas in the fall, as if anticipating the grays and browns that will shortly be its home.   To understand the appeal of the Yellow-rumped Warbler in winter, you might try to imagine young girl whose youthful beauty needs no scarlet adornments or colorful cosmetics.  Although it is not proud or boasted up, it appears regal, elegant, even.  It moves about in small flocks, pursing small berries and the occasional insect.  A loud chip note is a good clue to its presence.  It is not a seed eater, so don’t look for it on your feeder—although it very likely is in your yard. 

          The first one I identified was hawking insects from a cob web outside my window one late September day years ago.  It was a little brown and white bird with a needle-like bill.  But what I noticed most, which I matched with the field guide, were the yellow patches on the sides of the breast just under the wings and the small yellow marble-sized circle on the rump—just above the tail.  Although I would later see many of these birds each winter, I felt like I had made a discovery and had conquered a little bit of the unknown.  I wrote it down on an index card along with the date.  I was only just beginning to understand that birds are worth watching.