352 BULLETIN 2 03, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



heavily draped. Althoiigli I have found nests both in pines and 

 cypresses, there is little question but that the live oak holds them 

 more often than any other tree. The long plantation avenues are 

 splendid sites, and Arthur T. Wayne once told me that he had climbed 

 every tree in the long approach to Oakland Plantation in Christ 

 Church Parish near Charleston, for nests of this bird ! 



The height at which the nest is placed varies from 10 or 12 feet to 

 50 or 75, and in some cases to nearly 100. The lowest nest I ever 

 found was in my yard (in 1943) ; it was built in a clump of moss in a 

 cassina bush {Ilex vomitoria) barely 31/2 feet from the ground. How- 

 ever, the average height might be put at about 35 feet. 



Nest building materials are not of wide choice, usually consisting of 

 fine grasses, caterpillar silk, weed stems, and plant down, with a lining 

 of plant down or sometimes feathers. The moss among which the 

 nest is suspended is woven into the structure to some extent. Horse- 

 hair and skeletonized leaves are sometimes employed. The nest is 

 fairly deeply cupped and averages about 3 inches in outside diameter, 

 23^ in inside diameter, and the same in depth. The writer has never 

 seen a nest not built in moss, but Wayne (1910) gives two other loca- 

 tions in coastal South Carolina, his only such in 50 years of field work. 

 Both were in short-leaf pines, one 45 and the other 50 feet up, and 

 both were hidden in masses of needles and burs, invisible from below. 

 One of these nests is in the Brewster collection and the other in J. E. 

 Thayer's. 



Dr. E. E. Murphey, writing of the bird in the Savannah Eiver Valley 

 of Georgia (1937), states that it prefers moss "whenever it is present" 

 but adds, "contrary to the experience of Arthur T. Wayne in the 

 coastal area, it breeds also in pine woods which at places come very 

 close to the margins of the swamps * * * Here the Yellow- 

 throated Warbler nests not uncommonly, building far out on the end 

 of the horizontal limbs, well concealed by the needles." He states that 

 "two broods are usually reared." W. H. LaPrade, Jr. (1922) de- 

 scribes the nesting in the Atlanta area as similar to that noted by 

 Dr. Murphey about Augusta. In the coastal strip and the offshore 

 islands conditions identical with those in South Carolina prevail. 



In the latter State birds are usually mated by March 11. Nest 

 building is begmi by the middle of the month unless the season is 

 delayed or adverse weather hinders operations, in which case nests 

 are not found at times until early April. Georgia and Florida nest- 

 ings correspond closely. In areas where Spanish moss is not found, 

 dominica reverts to saddling its nest on the horizontal branches of 

 trees. Pearson and the Brimleys (1942) state that in the Raleigh, 

 N. C, area the nest is frequently constructed in pines "at a height of 

 from 20 to 40 feet." They also say that in the coastal region where 



