122 LAND-BIRDS. 



and oft-repeated songs, which are heard from the time of their 

 arrival nearly throughout the summer, which form so fitting an 

 accompaniment to the whisperings of the pines, and to which 

 I am never weary of listening. Another reason, however, is 

 that they show a fondness for the pines as great as my own, 

 though, no doubt, from very different motives. The majesty 

 of those trees, their gracefulness, their freshness throughout 

 the year ; their beauty in summer, when, after a hard shower, 

 the light of the setting sun breaks upon them ; their beauty in 

 winter, when their branches are loaded, many to the ground, 

 with snow, or when they are covered with glittering ice ; their 

 whisperings in the breezes of spring and summer, their sighing 

 and whistling in the southern gales, and finally their odor, 

 combine to render them the finest, I think, of all our forest 

 trees. 



e/. viGORSii. Pine Warbler. (^Pine-tree Warbler,^ 

 Pine-creeping Warbler. (" Pine Creeper.'''') A common 

 summer resident in the pine tracts of Massachusetts.* 



a. ^hr^ inches long. Upper parts, olive. Belly and two 

 wing-bars, white. Superciliary line, throat, and breast, bright 

 yellow. 5 , duller, often with little yellow below. In both 

 sexes, "tail-blotches confined to tico outer pairs of tail 

 feathers^ large^ oblique.^'' 



b. The nest is usually to be found in the same situation, 

 and is otherwise essentially like that of the " Black-throated 

 Green " (/).t Though generally finished in the last week of 

 May, it has been found in the earlier part of the month. The 

 eggs of each set are usually four, and average .67X.'52 of an 



* The distribution of the Pine War- and balsam forests which cover so much 



bier in New England is practically if of the interior of northern New Eng- 



not very strictly coextensive with that land. — W. B. 



of the pitch pine {Pinus rigida). It is t The nest of the Pine Warbler is 

 a very common summer bird in eastern usually built near the end of a branch 

 Massachusetts, especially on Cape Cod, among the pine needles by which it is 

 and extends to the northward and east- well concealed, whereas the Black- 

 ward on or near the coast as far, at least, throated Green Warbler ordinarily 

 as Mount Desert, but it is very rare in chooses a stout fork or limb well with- 

 Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and in the body of the tree. — W. B. 

 apparently wanting in the great spruce 



