BIRDS OF KANSAS.- 545 



Their song, only heard during the mating and breeding sea- 

 son, is a simple lay — a few sweet trills nttered in a spirited 

 manner, and abruptly ending on a rising scale. 



Their nests, according to Mr. Kennicott, who found them 

 breeding in the middle of June, in the vicinity of Great Slave 

 Lake, are uniformly placed on the ground, usually among the 

 leaves in a clump of low bushes, but sometimes hidden in the 

 side of a bank. They were large for the size of the bird, and 

 were composed almost entirely of long, coarse strips of bark,, 

 loosely interwoven with a few stems of plants and dry grasses, 

 and warmly lined with hair and fur of small animals, in some 

 cases wholly with fine grasses. Eggs four to six, .64x.48; 

 white, or creamy white, finely speckled (chiefly on the larger 

 end) with reddish brown; in form, oval. 



Helminthophila peregrina (Wils.). 



TENNESSEE WARBLER. 

 PLATE XXXII. 



Migratory; common in the eastern part of the State. Arrive 

 the last of April to first of May; return in September, but do 

 not all leave for the south until about the middle of October. 



B. 185. K. 87. C. 109. G. 38, 277. U. 647. 



Habitat. Eastern temperate North America; west to the base 

 of the Rocky Mountains (rare east of the Alleghanies, common 

 westward); breeding from the northern United States north- 

 ward to Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave Lake region; south 

 in winter to northern South America; Cuba. 



Sp. Char. "Top and side of the head and neck ash gray; rest of upper 

 parts olive green, brightest on the rump; beneath, dull white, faintly tinged in 

 places, especially on the sides, with yellowish olive. Eyelids and a stripe over 

 the eye whitish; a dusky line from the eye to the bill; outer tail feathers witii 

 a white spot along the inner edge near the tip. Female: With the ash of the 

 head less conspicuous; the under parts more tinged with olive yellow. 



"Autumnal specimens and young birds are sometimes so strongly tinged with 

 greenish yellow as to be scarcely distinguishable from //. celata. The wing is, 

 however, always longer, and the obscure whitish patch on the inner edge of the 

 exterior tail feathers, near its tip, is almost always appreciable. In celata this 

 edge is very narrowly and uniformly margined with whitish." 

 —35 



