Wartler WESTERN BIRDS 



heavily lined with horse hairs and feathers; placed 

 usually on branch of conifer, sometimes in small trees 

 close against trunk, measuring four inches in width out- 

 side by two and three-quarters in depth; inside two by 

 one and one-half. The birds raise two broods. 



Economically, these Warblers are among our most 

 beneficial because of their fondness for minute insect life 

 which larger birds would overlook, because of their fly- 

 catching habits, and their abundance in orchard and 

 garden. I have often watched these birds dart out from 

 a tree, zig-zag through the air, tumble down, or fly up- 

 ward before returning to the tree and I felt sure that this 

 clownish performance was not for my amusement, but 

 to appease their own appetites. I have watched them, 

 also, on a stretch of lawn when five or six of them were 

 daintily hopping about, or taking short flights, and eat- 

 ing aphis, or other minute life. 



They are of especial value in California, because of 

 the good they do in ridding the trees of scales, those 

 pests of the orchardist; scales and plant-lice forming a 

 considerable part of Audubon's diet. Henshaw tells us 

 that flies are its largest item of food, only a few Fly- 

 catchers and Swallows eating as many as do these birds. 

 Let us not forget this as we wage our "Swat the Fly" 

 campaign. 



GENUS DENDEOICA: BLACK- 

 THROATED GRAY WARBLER. 



Black-throated Gray Warbler: Dendroica grdciee. 



FAMILY— WOOD WARBLERS. 



This little Warbler is a strikingly garbed black and 

 white beauty that ranges from British Columbia, Ne- 

 vada, northern Utah, and northwestern Colorado south 



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