yellowbirds

From some hidden bough, a robin voiced his happiness, and yellowbirds flew hither and thither, and there was billing and cooing and nesting.

A Splendid Hazard Harold MacGrath 1901

The male yellowbirds flit about from point to point, apparently assuring each other of the highest sentiments of esteem and consideration, at the same time that one intimates to the other that he is carrying his joke a little too far.

Bird Stories from Burroughs Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs John Burroughs 1879

In the spring of 1855 he found nineteen small yellowbirds, perhaps goldfinches or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead around the light-house; and sometimes in the fall he had seen where a golden plover had struck the glass in the night, and left the down and the fatty part of its breast on it.

Cape Cod 1865