GIS MICHIGAN BIRD LII-E. 



feathci\s. The eggs are three to five, creamy white, spotted with brown and 

 lilac, often with a few black specks, and average .67 by .49 inches. 



This species is mainly insectivorous, and, owing to its abundance and 

 the considerable period over which its visits extend during migration, it 

 is one of the most valuable warblers in holding orchard insects in check. 

 I^oth spring and fall it may be found gorging itself with plant lice and 

 searching the twigs and leaves for span-worms, leaf-rollers and harmful 

 insects of every kind. It also eats berries and possibly a few seeds, being 

 l)articularly fond of the berries of the poison-ivy, and to a less extent of 

 those of the junipers. 



TECHNICAL DP^SCRIPTION. 



Advilt male: Entire iijiper parts bright olive-green, iLsiially without spots or streaks; 

 tliroat and upper breast clear black, this continued as a series of streaks aiid spots along 

 either side; remainder of breast and belly white or yellowish-white; sides of head and 

 neck mainly bright yellow, with a dusky streak through the eye and a similar shade on 

 the ear-coverts; wings and tail dusky, the former with two white bars across the coverts, 

 the latter with the inner webs of the two outer pairs of feathers entirely white. Female 

 similar, but with the black and yellow areas more or less obscured by gray or whitish tips 

 of the feathers, and throat and breast often washed with yellowish. Young of the year 

 resemble the female, but the markings are still more obsciu'c. Miiii 



Lengtli of adult male 4.35 to 5.40 inches; wing 2.40 to 2.55;^tail 1.90~to 2.05; female 

 somewhat smaller. 



282. Kirtland's Warbler. Dendroica kirtlandi (Baml). (670) 



Synonyms: Jack-pine Warbler, Jack-pine Bird. — Sylvicola Kirtlan<lii, Baird, 1852. 

 — Dendroica, or Dendrceca, kirtlandi of other authors. 



Plate LXI. 



Our only warbler which combines black-streaked pale yellow under 

 parts, black-streaked bluish-gray upper parts, and white-marked outer 

 tail-feathers. In addition, it has white on both eyelids, forming practically 

 a wdiite eye-ring, and the whitish wing-bars, if present at all, are narrow, 

 dull and inconspicuous. 



Distribution. — Eastern United States from Florida to northern Michigan 

 during migration, and west to Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota; breeding, 

 so far as known, only on the jack-pine plains of Michigan north of 44°. 

 Winters in the Bahamas. 



This has been considered the rarest warbler of the United States, and 

 although described in 1852, from a specimen collected by Chas. Pease near 

 Cleveland, Ohio, May 18, 1851, its summer home remained a mystery 

 until 1903, when it was shown to be a not uncommon bird on the jack-jjine 

 plains of northern Michigan, where nests, eggs and young were taken by 

 Mr. Norman A. Wood of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The bird was named 

 Kirtland's Warbler in honor of J. P. Kirtland of Cleveland, in acknow- 

 ledgment of his great services in the promotion of knowledge of the natural 

 history of the Mississippi Valley. Although the specimen above alluded 

 to is the type specimen, a bird of the same kind had been taken at sea, 

 near the Bahama Islands, by S. Cabot, Jr., probably in 1840. From this 

 time until 1898 single specimens were taken at rare intervals in the eastern 

 Ignited States to the number of nineteen or twenty in all, while it was 

 discovered that the bird wintered in the Bahama Islands, where a total 

 of about fifty specimens (j)robably just 55) have been taken. 



