328 HABITS OF Wilson's blackcap 



1811, but not published till 1831. He called it Motacilla pileo- 

 lata; but Wilson, in 1811, published it as a new species under 

 the style of Muscicapa piisilla, the specific portion of which 

 name will stand, for Bonaparte's alteration to icilsonii is not 

 required after the removal of the species from the genus in 

 which Wilson wrongly placed it. 



It is a rather common bird of passage through the Easteru 

 portions of the United States, and decidedly more abundant in 

 the West, in all wooded regions from the 

 Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. Its com- 

 parative numbers on the different sides of 

 the continent help to an understanding of 

 the apparent absence from the West Indies 

 of a bird so widely distributed. For, from 

 Fig. 44.-wii8on'8 Green its winter home in Central America, where 

 Black-capped Fiycatching it is represented to be very numerous, it 

 Warbler, natural size. migrates through Mexico and perhaps 

 across the Gulf, the greater number of individuals passing 

 straight north, while but a small proportion spread easterly 

 along the Atlantic States. In the Mississippi Valley and 

 eastward, it is not known to stop to breed short of the latitude 

 of Massachusetts, and I think that its nesting even so far south 

 as this is not positively determined, but rather inferred from 

 the presence of the bird in August, as recorded by Mr. Allen. 

 In Maine, however, it is noted without question as a summer 

 resident by no less conservative an ornithologist than Dr. 

 Brewer, whose aim latterly has been to present a list of New 

 England birds from which all logical induction as well as all 

 error should be rigidly excluded. But I am not aware that the 

 nest has been found even in Northern New England, nor indeed 

 anywhere in the United States, unless theNuttall's advices from 

 Oregon be considered satisfactory. The bird passes through 

 chiefly during the month of May in the spring, and in Septem- 

 ber and October of the following migratory season. It proceeds 

 as far at least as Labrador, where it was found breeding by 

 Audubon, as it also was in Newfoundland, and whence it begins 

 to migrate during the latter part of August, according to the 

 same authority. Audubon's description of a Labrador nest, 

 and Nuttall's notice of one he found in Oregon, are still our 

 only sources of information respecting the nidification of the 

 bird. The former's nest was placed at the end of a small hori- 

 zontal branch of a dwarf fir, in the dense terminal foliage, three 

 feet or so from the ground, in the centre of one of the thickets 



