The birds that John James Audubon identified for the first edition of Birds of America as a Yellow-breasted Warbler and a Roscoe’s Yellow-throat (see Plate 24) became a Maryland Ground-warbler in the later octavo edition of Birds of America. The current common name for the Maryland Ground-warbler is the Common yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas).
The Common yellowthroat holds its short tail upright, prefers to keep low to the ground to scuttle in and around tall grasses, bushes, and small trees, and produces just about every call and song like a wren rather than a warbler. “The notes of this little bird render it more conspicuous than most of its genus, for although they cannot be called very musical, they are far from being unpleasant, and are uttered so frequently during the day, that one, in walking along the briary ranges of the fences, is almost necessarily brought to listen to its whitititee, repeated three or four times every five or six minutes, the bird seldom stopping expressly to perform its music, but merely uttering the notes after it has picked an insect from amongst the leaves of the low bushes which it usually inhabits. It then hops a step or two up or down, and begins again.” The Common yellowthroat may look, act, and sound like a wren but remains technically a warbler.