124 BIRDS OF NEW ENGLAND AND EASTERN NEW YORK 



The Cape May Warbler is a very rare migrant through 

 New York and New England, generally occurring only when 

 the other migrating warblers are unusually abundant. It 

 should be looked for in the height of the spring migration, 

 about the middle of May, and again late in August and 

 September. It is probably less rare in western New Eng- 

 land, and is reported as tolerably common in the fall at 

 Sing Sing (Chapman). From 1871 to 1875 it bred '^really 

 abundantly in the coniferous forests about Lake Umbagog 

 in western Maine " (Brewster), but is now rarely found 

 breeding even in northern New England. 



The song resembles the Black-poll's quite closely; it 

 has been described as peculiarly " faint and listless," '' a 

 monotonous zee-zee-zee-zee,^' '' sometimes with three zeeSy 

 sometimes with four, but always in an unhurried mono- 

 tone " (Torrey). 



A male in spring plumage could be confused only with 

 the Black and Yellow Warbler, from which its black croion 

 and orange-brown ear-coverts should distinguish it. . 



NoRTHERX Parula Warbler. Compsotlilijiyis ameri- 



cana ns?iece 



4.73 



Ad. $. — Upper parts and sides of head grayish-blue, with a 

 patch of greenish-yellow in the middle of the back ; wing-hars 

 white ; throat and breast yellow, washed across the upper breast 

 with chocolate-brown; belly white. Ad. 9- — Upper parts as in 

 male; breast without the brown band. 



Nest, of usnea, generally in a pendent bunch of the same moss. 

 Eggs, white, speckled with reddish-brown about the larger end. 



The Parula Warbler breeds in swamps or deep moist 

 woods, wherever the trees are hung witli the long gray usnea 

 moss. It is, therefore, found in summer in the white cedar 

 swamps of Cape Cod, southern Khode Island, and Connec- 

 ticut, and throughout the damp forests of Berkshire County, 



