John Latham listed in A General Synopsis of Birds (1783) a bird that “inhabits Louisiana, where it has obtained the name of Protonotaire.” When Thomas Pennant listed the bird in Arctic Zoology (1785), he re-titled the Protonotaire as a Prothonotary warbler without explaining the reason for the name (see Volume 2, pg. 410). In Histoire Naturelle (1799), Comte de Buffon assigned the common name of “Le Figuier Protonotaire” to the bird known in Louisiana as a “protonotaire” also with no apparent reason (see Oiseaux, pg. 87). If the name is associated with a cassock that a prothonotary clerk might have worn, then, to match the bird, the color of the front of the cassock must have been a solid, brilliant gold-yellow.
John James Audubon became most familiar with the Prothonotary warbler while hunting along the creeks and bayous around St. Francisville in Louisana. Audubon noted that the bird was most partial to freshwater snails, so much so that Audubon estimated that finding the bird anywhere other than near such food “would prove quite useless.”
Also useless would be to find the “cane vine” that Joseph Mason drew and Audubon placed with the Prothonotary warbler in Birds of America. “The plant on which you see these birds, grows in swampy places, but is extremely rare, and I have not been able to procure any scientific appellation for it. In Louisiana, it is called the cane vine. It bears a small white flower in clusters. The berries are bitter and nauseous. The stem, which runs up and over trees, resembles that of other climbing plants, is extremely elastic, and as tough as a cord. The leaves, of which you see the form and colour, are also tough and thick.” The cane vine remains too rare for there to be any other findings or reports of the plant.