Plate 95 – Blue-eyed Yellow Warbler

It was while living and working in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1822, that John James Audubon was able to collect the specimen that he used for his drawing of the Blue-eyed Yellow warbler. For the later octavo edition of Birds of America, Audubon re-named the Blue-eyed Yellow Warbler and Children’s Warbler (Plate 35) a Yellow-poll wood warbler. The Yellow-poll wood-warbler is now known commonly as the Northern Yellow warbler (Setophagia aestiva). For much of the time that Audubon lived and worked in Natchez, Joseph Mason assisted Audubon with the drawing of plants for Birds of America. It was Mason who drew the wisteria plant on which the Blue-eyed Yellow warbler is perching. Audubon described the wisteria as growing in “low, damp or marshy places. It there runs over decayed trees, spreading in the form of a bower, and hanging in graceful festoons. The long pendulous clusters of pale purple flowers.” The native wisteria (Wisteria frutescens), as it has been for so many of the plants that appear in Birds of Ameria, has been overwhelmed by Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda), Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis), and other highly invasive non-native plants.