144 The Ottawa Naturalist. [October 



NESTING OF SOME CANADI\N WARBLERS. 



By Wm, L. Kells, Listowell, Ont. 



The Myrtle Warbler [Dendroica coronata). 



The myrtle warbler known also as the yellow-rump warbler 

 is among- the first members of its family to return to Canada when 

 the winter is over, and the advancing spring-time is renewing the 

 vegetation and insect life in our fields and the remnant of our 

 forest lands. And, again, in the autumn, when the harvest sea- 

 son is over and the chilly western winds and night-frosts herald 

 the approach of winter, it is noted to be, with the palm-warbler, 

 among the last of its family to affect the orchard, the garden and 

 the margins of the woods with its presence and its notes ; and not 

 until some pretty severe frosts have occurred does it take its final 

 departure for the year towards its tropical winter home, and we 

 note it no more till the early days of the following May, and these 

 tacts, with others in its life-history, show it to be among the 

 members of its family that advance the furthest towards the 

 north to find a summer-home and a nesting place In the early 

 period after its arrival, it is sometimes quite abundant in our 

 locality and may then be noted gleaning in the tallest trees of our 

 woods, sometimes in isolated groves, and again in the thickest 

 forest, and as the season advances and the buds and blossoms of 

 the fruit trees expand into leaves and flowers, it occasiona'ly 

 visits the environs of human habitation both in the rural districts 

 and the vicinity of villages and towns, and a few remain and nest 

 in suitable locations, but the majority wing their way further to 

 the north where they find more congenial breeding-places and per- 

 haps more suitable and abundant tood ; and from here they begin 

 their southward departuie on the first signs of approaching winter. 

 Those few of the myrtle warblers that remain in south-central 

 Ontario through the summer season retire to the thickest parts of 

 low swampy woods, where there is an intermingling of soft-wood 

 timber and conifers, and here, amid the gloom of brusli wood and 

 dense foliage, where there is seldom any intrusion of human kind, 

 and where its presence and nesting site is not suspected, unless 

 the song notes of the male bird betray the secret to some student 



