Here we have the “eastern” or “yellow” subspecies of the palm warbler (Setophaga palmarum), all fluffed up against the chill of our spring morning.
These birds often are our earliest-arriving wood warblers. They’re described as “unmistakably humble” in a Forbush treatise report because they spend a lot of time on the ground acting like sparrows. They also are “wagtails,” birds that wag their tails as much as a puppies.
Although inappropriately named after a tropical tree, palm warblers are among our most northerly woods warblers. They breed in forested bogs and fens in Canada and our northernmost states; they also often build their nests into ground moss clumps and not in trees. (Palm warblers apparently were misnamed by famed German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin [1748-1804] based on a specimen that someone collected on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, where the bird was only wintering and not a fulltime resident as thought.)
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 19, 2023.) See also the image in the first Comment space. Thanks to Kim Ridley for the bird identification help.