KIRTLAND'S WARBLER 417 



nesting begins late in March or early in April. Nicholson observed two nests in 

 process of construction at Orlando, March 12, 1911, one 30 feet up in a cypress 

 tree, the other 40 feet up in a pine. In the same locality, on April 18, he found 

 a nest containing 4 eggs, 30 feet up in a pine, and 10 feet from the trunk at the 

 end of a branch. The nests are usually near the tips of slender limbs and well 

 concealed in clumps of leaves or bunches of cones. They are deeply cupped, 

 constructed of grass and plant down, with a few pine needles, and neatly lined 

 with thistle down. * * * Examination in the Biological Survey of the 

 stomachs of 7 specimens taken in Florida showed the food to consist largely of 

 insects and spiders, with small quantities of vegetable debris The insects taken 

 included grasshoppers, grouse locusts, moths and their larvae, beetles, ants and 

 other Hymenoptera, bugs, flies, and scale insects. 



The eggs of the Florida pine warbler are similar to those of the 

 northern bird. The measurements of 12 eggs average 18.0 to 13.6 

 millimeters ; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 19.0 by 13.1, 

 18.2 by 14.2, and 16.9 by 13.1 milluneters (Harris). 



DENDROICA KIRTLANDII (Baird) 



KIRTLAND'S WARBLER 



Plates 50-52 



CONTKIBTJTED BT JOSSELYN VAN TtNE 

 HABITS 



Kirtland's warbler was not described until 1852; yet the earliest 

 scientific specimen was collected by Dr. Samuel Cabot, Jr., aboard 

 ship near Abaca Island of the Bahamas in the second week of Octo- 

 ber 1841. Cabot, however, was on his way with John L. Stephens to 

 Yucatan, and he became so preoccupied with his studies of the spec- 

 tacular tropical birds of a country then entirely untouched by orni- 

 thologists that the little Bahaman warbler skin, brought back to 

 Boston and deposited in his collection, remained unnoticed for more 

 than 20 years (Baird, 1865). 



On May 13, 1851, Charles Pease at Cleveland collected a male of the 

 still unnamed warbler and gave the specimen to his father-in-law, 

 Jared P. Kirtland, the well-known naturalist. A few days later, 

 Spencer F. Baird, returning to Washington from a scientific meeting 

 in Cincinnati, stopped a day in Cleveland with his friend Kirtland 

 and was given the specimen to take back to the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution (see Dall, 1915, p. 264). The next year (1852) Baird pub- 

 lished his description of the new warbler, naming it Sylvicola kirt- 

 landii in honor of Dr. Kirtland, "a gentleman to whom, more than 

 [to] any one living, we are indebted for a knowledge of the Natural 

 History of the Mississippi Valley." 



