1916] The Ottawa Naturalist 



ANOTHER NESTING SITE FOR THE PRAIRIE WARBLER 



IN ONTARIO. 

 By W. E. Saunders, London, Oxt. 



The Prairie Warbler (Dendroica discolor) is one of the rarest 

 and most casual migrant visitors to Ontario, and the only hint 

 of a breeding station in this province was the one obtained 

 when I found a few singing males near the tip of the Bruce 

 Peninsula in 1900. 



On the 14th of June this year I was at Port Franks (at the 

 south-east corner of Lake Huron), in company with Mr. N. 

 Tripp, of Forest. Early in the morning Mr. Tripp took me 

 across the river to a region where he found two birds which 

 he took to be Prairie Warblers, on June 14th, 1915, and as soon 

 as we reached the locality we heard the characteristic song of 

 this bird, consisting of ten or twelve very short notes, rising 

 not more than two tones in the whole song, the notes resembling 

 a wheezy whistle. 



The location was within two or three hundred yards of 

 the lake shore, where most of the surface was sand, with scatter- 

 ing vegetation, but the warbler was singing from an island of 

 juniper, with a few white and red pines and birch, the mound 

 rising to perhaps thirty feet in height, and the top of it being 

 something like thirty or forty feet across. After watching him 

 sing in a red pine at very short range, where he was feeding, he 

 flew sixty yards to another similar island, where he sang again. 



The next morning I investigated the locality more thor- 

 oughly, and found at least two other males singing, but nothing 

 more was learned of their business in this locality, though the date 

 is an acceptable proof that they were on their breeding ground. 



The country along the lake shore for several miles each 

 way is similar to that where these birds were found, and it is 

 probable that extended investigation will disclose the presence 

 of a breeding colony of some moment. On the west side of 

 the river mouth, in a grassy marsh, were a number of pairs of 

 the Short-billed Marsh Wren, but outside of these two species 

 nothing rare was seen in the two days which I spent at the Port. 



There were no White Throats, Juncos, Northern Thrushes, 

 no Olive-sided Flycatchers, all of which are supposed to nest 

 in small numbers in that district; nor did I find either Broad- 

 winged nor Sharp-shinned Hawks, which were the object of 

 the expedition. 



The Yellow Lady's Slipper was growing near the Short- 

 billed Marsh Wren colony, on the open prairie-like land, in 

 exactly similar conditions to those under which I have found 



