tsYLVlCULlUJi — THE WAKBLERS. 225 



Dr. Cooper found this Warliler very almiulaiit in Washington Territory, 

 and noticed their arri\al in large numbers at tlie Straits of Fuca as early 

 as April 8. 



The Summer Yellow-Bird arrives in New England with great uniformity 

 from the first to the middle of May. Its coming is usually the harbinger of 

 the opening summer and expanding leaves. Unlike most of its family, it is 

 confiding and familiar, easily encouraged, by attention to its wants, to cultivate 

 the society of man. It confidingly builds its nest in gardens, often in close 

 vicinity to dwellings, and in the midst of large villages and cities, among the 

 shrubbery of frequented parks. This Warbler, soon after its arri\-al, begins 

 the construction of its nest. It is usually placed in low Ijushes, three or four 

 feet from the ground. Occasionally very different positions are chosen. 

 Hedges of buckthorn and hawthorn, barberry-bushes, and other low shrubs, 

 are their favorite places of resort. On one occasion the nest was placed 

 some forty feet from the ground, in the top of a horse-chestnut tree over- 

 hanging the main street of a village. Such high positions are, however, 

 not very common. 



The nest is invarial)ly fastened to several twigs with great firmness, and 

 with a remarkalile neatness and skill. A great variety of materials is em- 

 ployed in the construction of tlicir nests, though not often in the same nest, 

 wliich is usually quite homogeneous. The more common materials are the 

 liempen fibres of plants, fibrous strips of bark, slender stems of plants and 

 leaves, and down of asclepias. Interwoven with these, forming the inner 

 materials, are the down from willow catkins, the woolly furze from fern-stalks 

 and the Erioplwriim virginicurn, and similar substances. These are lined with 

 soft, fine grasses, hair, feathers, and other warm materials. Cotton, where 

 procurable, is a favorite material ; as also is wool, where abundant. I have 

 known instances where nests were built almost exclusively of one or the 

 other material. A pair of these birds, in 1836, built their nest under a par- 

 lor window in Roxbury, where all their operations could be closely watched. 

 When discovered, only the framework, the fastening to the supporting twigs, 

 had been erected. Tiie work of comjiletion was sim])le and rapid. The 

 female was the chief builder, taking her position in tlie centre of the nest 

 and arranging the materials in tlieir places as lier mate lirought them to lier. 

 Occasionally, with oxitstretched wings and expanded tail, .she would whirl 

 herself round, giving to tlie soft and yielding materials tlieir hemisisherical 

 form. At intervals she arrested her revolutions to stop and regulate with 

 her bill some unyielding portion. When her mate was dilatory, she made 

 brief excursions and collected material for herself, and when the materials 

 brought her were deemed unsuitable, they were rejected in a most summary 

 and amusing manner. The important part of the tail-feathers in shaping the 

 nest and placing the materials in position was a striking feature in this in- 

 teresting performance. The greater portion of tlie nest was thus constructed 

 in a single day. 



•2y 



