The prothonotary warbler was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Louisiana.

[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle, which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[7] The genus name is from Late Latin protonotarius, meaning "prothonotary", a notary attached to the Byzantine court who wore golden-yellow robes.

[12] It has an olive-coloured back with blue-grey wings and tail, yellow underparts, a relatively long pointed bill, and black legs.

They also experience parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), and are outcompeted for nest sites by the house wren (Troglodytes aedon).

[20] The species persists in protected environments such as South Carolina's Francis Beidler Forest, which is currently home to more than 2,000 pairs, the densest known population.

First, the warbler is mentioned in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold as the "[J]ewel of my disease-ridden woodlot", "as proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.

[citation needed] The prothonotary warbler became known to a wider audience in the 1940s as the bird that established a connection between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

However, future U.S. president, Richard Nixon, who was then a freshman congressman on the committee, became convinced that Hiss had committed perjury at the hearing.