1-^8 The Ottawa Naturalist. [December 



NESTING OF SOME CANADIAN WARBLERS. 



SECOND PAPER. 



By W. L. Kells, Listowel, Ont, 



Nesting of the Bay-breasted Warbler. 

 It is now over twenty years since I began to form my cabinet 

 collection of the oology of Listowel and vicinity. Having first 

 taken specimens of what species I could find near home, I set out 

 one June day into the forest that then existed on the northwest of 

 the town, and soon found myself in a tract of swampy woods, 

 composed mostly of black ash timber, with an intermingling of 

 conifers and some hardwood. Here, a number of species ot the 

 warbler family, as well as other birds, some of which were yet un- 

 known to me, were giving vent to their songs; some low down in 

 the brush-wood, others more elevated among the denser foliage. 

 Here the first nest that claimed my attention was one placed on 

 the side of a small birch tree where a tuft of twigs grew out from 

 the ground. I soon reached and secured this ; it contained three 

 fresh eggs ; these were of a white hue, with dottings and patches 

 of a brownish or flesh color, the nest itself being composed of 

 fragments of bark, rootlets and hair. I did not then note the 

 owner, nor could I, at that time, have identified the species, but I 

 gave them a name, and placed them in my collection. Two years 

 after-.-June, 1879 I was out in a piece of swampy woods south 

 of the town, when my attenticn was arrested by the actions 

 of a small bird which was constructing a nest among some 

 leafy twigs growing on the small horizontal branch of a little 

 water-elm, about three feet out from the trunk and ten 

 feet off the ground. Some days after I viewed this nest again, it 

 then contained one eeg, and three days more, when I revisited it, 

 I found the bird at home, sitting on three eggs, which I inferred 

 were the full set, and that incubation had begun. When this 

 bird flew off her nest and took a position on a branch near 

 by, uttering a few chip-like notes, I identified her as a female bay- 

 breasted warbler. This nest and eggs were exactly like those 

 above described, and of course both belonged to the same species. 

 Some days after this I found another nest of this bird in a 



