THE WARBLERS 



223 



yearly to their winter home in Brazil. Nearly all the 

 warblers of western United States spend the winter in 

 Mexico and northern Central America. 



It might be expected that those species which migrate 

 to South America would follow the chain of West India 

 Islands, keeping thus always within sight of land, but 

 such is the case with only a few species, the majority pre- 

 ferring the direct flight of five hundred miles across the 

 Gulf of Mexico. They migrate mostly at night, although 

 they continue their northward journey slowly during the 

 day, feeding as they go. Occasionally they make long 

 flights across bodies of water by day, but usually this is 

 done at night. What guides them on these journeys may 

 always be a mystery, but it is now thought, and there is 

 good evidence for so believing, that birds have a special 

 and very highly developed "sense of direction." Ordin- 

 arih' they migrate from a few hundred feet to nearly two 



A COZY HOME IX THE MARSHES 



A female yellow-throat on its nest among the sedges. One of these yellow-throats 



holds the record of having eaten 3500 plant -lice in forty minutes. 



miles above the earth but, on cloudy nights, they descend 

 to escape the clouds and then often become confused by 

 the illuminations in light-houses or tall buildings and dash 

 themselves to dcatli against the glass. Several hundred 

 birds, a large percentage of them warblers, have been 

 picked up at the foot of a single light-house, the Washing- 

 ton Monument, and similar places, after a foggy night. 



As might be expected, the first warblers to push north- 

 ward in the spring are those which are the hardiest and 

 whose migration routes are the shortest. Thus the jjinc 

 and the myrtle warblers arrive in northern United States 

 while the trees are still bare, and the blackpolls do not 

 begin to arrive until the middle of May. In the fall the 

 redstarts and yellow warblers start back before August 

 while insect food is still most abundant, but the myrtles 

 and others of short migration routes remain until the 

 leaves have fallen. 



One might assume from the name of the family that 

 these little birds are beautiful singers. The truth is, how- 

 ever, that there are very few whose songs are much more 

 musical than the calls of insects. Others whose songs are 

 weak make up in sweetness what they lack in volume. 

 The water-thnishcs with their wild, ringing notes, the 

 chat with its loud, bizarre calls and whistles, the oven 



i: Will 



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Mil \I 



Young cerulean warblers ready to leave the nest The lichen-covered nest is 

 ■ ine of tlie more unusual types found m the family and is extremely inconspicuous 

 and difficult to find. 



bird with its varied flight song, are, perhaps, exceptions. 

 The simple trill of the yellow warbler, the wheezy notes of 

 the black-throated blue, the iivl.stent calls of the Tennes- 

 see and the blackpoll, the vivacious notes of the redstart 

 and the chestnut-sided warblers fix themselves readily in 

 our minds like the chirp of the cricket and the belated 

 love calls of the katydid. They are expressive of the 

 first green of gardens and hedgerows and the dark shade 

 of northern forests, and when once learned they make the 

 discovery and identification of the warblers a simple task, 

 but no satisfactory method of transcribing them to paper 

 has yet been found. 



The nesting habits of warblers are as varied as their 

 colors and present many surprises. Most birds nest where 

 they find their food, so that one expects terrestrial birds 

 to nest on the ground and tree-loving birds to nest in the 

 tree-tops. One is not surprised, therefore, to find the 

 nests of the oven-bird and water-thrush on the ground, 

 those of the chestnut-sided warbler and the chat in the 

 low bushes, and the blackbumian warbler's in the tops of 

 the evergreens. It is strange, however, that the black and 

 white warbler, which spends its life creeping about the 

 trunk and larger branches of trees, descends to the ground 

 to nest as do also the Nashville and Tennessee warblers 

 which we find most frequently singing in the tree-tops. 

 The roofed-over nest, which gives the oven bird its name, 

 the lichen-covered nest of the cerulean warbler, and the 



