WAYNE'S BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER 309 



bird whose nest we sought that morning, Wayne's warbler, the south- 

 ern race of the black-throated green warbler. 



To find the black-throated green warbler in a C5^press swamp might 

 seem strange indeed to one who knows the species in its spruce and 

 balsam highlands, in the rhododendron and laurel thickets of the Blue 

 Eidge, in the evergreens of the Adirondacks and Maine ! Yet here it 

 is, one of the characteristic avian dwellers of the warm swamplands of 

 the South Carolina Low Country, arriving in the spring to nest amid 

 the green cypress twigs, the drooping limbs of the magnolias, and the 

 majestic spread of the live oak. 



When Arthur T. Wayne of Mount Pleasant, S. C, discovered the 

 first nesting of this race he was sure it was not a typical Dendroica 

 virens virens, and on April 25, 1918 he sent a male to Outram Bangs 

 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Mass. Later 

 he sent him six other specimens. Upon comparing them with speci- 

 mens of D. V. virens, Bangs (1918) described it as a different race, 

 giving it the name of the discoverer, waynei. Extracts from his 

 published material are illuminating. He states, for instance, that 

 "this series proves to represent a form easily distinguishable from 

 true Dendroica virens (Gmelin) . I take great pleasure in naming it 

 after the keen ornithologist and excellent observer and collector who 

 discovered it, and who noticed its peculiarities even without sufficient 

 material with which to compare it." 



The subspecific differences are mainly a duller coloration, less yel- 

 lowish, and of a paler shade, and the throat patch more restricted. Its 

 principal variation from virens is its much smaller and more delicate 

 bill. As Bangs points out, "measurements of a bill so small do not 

 convey the same impression that an actual comparison of specimens 

 does. The bill of the new form when compared to that of D. v. virens, 

 appears not more than two-thirds as large." Certainly this is true. 

 So marked is the difference that a specimen of waynei placed amid 

 a score or more of virens can easily be picked out even at some distance. 



The southern limit of the breeding range of virens appears to be 

 the high mountains of Carolina and Georgia and northern Alabama, 

 usually at elevations of more than 4,000 feet; waynei is confined to 

 a coastal strip (in some cases less than 5 miles from the ocean) so that 

 the intervening area between it and virens averages about 300 miles. 

 In all that distance, no northern black-throated green warbler ap- 

 pears except in scattered and isolated instances. The migratory route 

 of waynei is as yet imperfectly known, but since virens is so scarce 

 along the lower Atlantic coast as to be virtually absent, and since it 

 has never yet been secured or reported along the Carolina and Georgia 

 or northern Florida coasts, it would seem that any specimen seen in 

 those localities would be waynei. 



981873—53 21 



