EASTERN NASHVILLE WARBLER 105 



Winter. — Many of the dusky warblers, perhaps most of them, de- 

 sert the islands in the fall when they become dry and uninviting, for 

 the winter spreading widely on the mainland as far north as the San 

 Francisco Bay region and inland to Merced County. Dr. Joseph 

 Grinnell (1898) says: "This subspecies appears in the vicinity of 

 Pasadena in the oak regions and along the arroyos in large numbers 

 during August, and even by the middle of July. Remains in dimin- 

 ishing numbers through the winter ; the latest specimen noted in the 

 spring was secured by me, Feb. 29 ('96) ." 



VERMIVORA KUFICAPILLA RUFICAPILLA (Wilson) 



EASTERN NASHVILLE WARBLER 



Plates 16, 17 



HABns 



Alexander Wilson discovered this species near Nashville, Tenn., and 

 gave it the name Nashville warbler. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway 

 (1874) say of its early history : "For a long while our older naturalists 

 regarded it as a very rare species, and knew nothing as to its habits 

 or distribution. Wilson, who first met with it in 1811, never found 

 more than three specimens, which he procured near Nashville, Tenn. 

 Audubon only met with three or four, and these he obtained in Louisi- 

 ana and Kentucky. These and a few others in Titian Peale's collection, 

 supposed to have been obtained in Pennsylvania, were all he ever saw. 

 Mr. Nuttall at first regarded it as very rare, and as a Southern 

 species." 



This is not strange when we stop to consider that this bird is more or 

 less irregular in its occurrence, apparently fluctuating in numbers in 

 different localities and perhaps choosing different routes of migration. 

 Its record here in eastern Massachusetts illustrates this point. Thomas 

 Nuttall never saw the bird while he lived in Cambridge, from 1825 to 

 1834. Dr. Samuel Cabot, who lived there from 1832 to 1836, told 

 William Brewster (1906) that he was sure that it did not occur regu- 

 larly in eastern Massachusetts at that time. According to Brewster : 



Soon afterwards a few birds began to appear every season. They increased 

 in numbers, gradually but steadily, until they had become so common that in 

 1842 he obtained ten specimens in the course of a single morning. 



In 1868, and for some fifteen years later, I found Nashville Warblers breeding 

 rather numerously in Waltham, Lexington, Arlington and Belmont, usually in dry 

 and somewhat barren tracts sparsely covered with gray birches, oaks or red 

 cedars, or with scattered pitch pines. A few birds continue to occupy certain 

 of these stations, but in all of the towns just mentioned the Nashville Warbler 

 is less common and decidedly less generally distributed in summer now than it 

 was twenty-five or thirty years ago. 



Forbush (1929) found it "more common in eastern Massachusetts in 

 the latter quarter of the last century than it is today." And my own 



