68 BULLETIN 203, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Spring. — From its winter home in Cuba Bachman's warbler enters 

 the United States through Florida, and according to Howell (1932) 

 the earliest date of arrival in that state is February 27. It has also 

 been recorded from Louisiana on the same date (Chapman, 1907). 

 The majority of individuals, however, cross to the United States main- 

 land early in March ; apparently the birds that summer in Alabama, 

 Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucl^ reach their breeding grounds by 

 skirting the Gulf coast and continuing up the Mississippi Valley. 

 They reach the vicinity of Charleston, S. C, in March and nesting 

 begins at once, for Wayne (1907) found a nest on March 27 con- 

 taining one Qgg and another on April 3 with five well-incubated eggs. 

 He calls attention to the fact that Bachman's warbler therefore breeds 

 earlier than the resident pine and yellow-throated warblers. 



Nesting. — Dr. Bachman did not discover the breeding grounds of 

 this warbler, and it was more than 60 years before the first nests and 

 eggs became known to science; Widmann (1897) found the bird breed- 

 ing in the St. Francis River country of Missouri and Arkansas on 

 May 13, 1897. The nesting area extended "over two acres of black- 

 berry brambles among a medley of half-decayed and lately-felled tree- 

 tops, lying in pools of water, everything dripping wet with dew in 

 the forenoon, and steaming under a broiling sun in the afternoon." 

 The first nest, which he describes as being 2 feet from the ground, 

 "was made of leaves and grass blades, lined with a peculiar black 

 rootlet ; it was tied very slightly to a vertical blackberry vine of fresh 

 growth and rested lightly on another, which crossed the former at a 

 nearly right angle. From above it was entirely hidden by branchlets 

 of latest growth, and the hand could not have been inserted without 

 at first cutting several vines, overlying it in different directions." 



Ridgway (1897) describes this nest as, "a somewhat compressed 

 compact mass composed externally of dried weed- and grass-stalks and 

 dead leaves, many of the latter partially skeletonized ; internally com- 

 posed of rather fine weed- and gi-ass-stalks, lined with black fibres, 

 apparently dead threads of the black pendant lichens {Ramalina^ 

 species ?) which hang in beard-like tufts from button-bushes {Cepha- 

 lanthus) and other shrubs growing in wetter portions of the western 

 bottomlands. The height of the nest is about 3i/^ inches; its greatest 

 breadth is about 4 inches, its width in the opposite direction being 

 about 3 inches. The cavity is about li/^ inches deep and li^ X 2 inches 

 wide." 



In 1906, Wayne (1907) found six nests of Bachman's warbler near 

 Charleston, S. C, from two of which the young had flown. "The 

 swamp in which this warbler breeds is heavily timbered and subjected 

 to overflow from rains and reservoirs. The trees are chiefly of a 

 deciduous character, such as the cypress, black gum, sweet gum, tupelo, 



