GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER 53 



ground, waiting for their parents. We can find them easily, for they 

 frequently utter their characteristic "cricket note," and we can ap- 

 proach them closely, for they scarcely heed us. The parents, too, 

 when they are feeding the young birds, pay little attention to us and 

 come fearlessly to them even when we stand near. At such times 

 they work in a seeming panic of hurry, flying about in the low growth 

 searching for food, or visiting the smallest branches high up in the 

 trees, where they cling to the terminal twigs, hanging like chickadees 

 as they probe among the curled up leaves (insect nests) for food 

 hidden there, then back to the waiting young, seemingly in continuous 

 motion and without the slightest pause in their nervous activity. At 

 this season when the parents are busy with the young birds, about 

 the third week in June in eastern Massachusetts, they are so occupied 

 in searching for food that the male rarely sings. 



In two particulars — their tameness, or indifference to our presence, 

 and the almost complete cessation of singing thus early in the season — 

 the goldenwing differs from the other common birds which breed in 

 much the same regions, the chestnut-sided warbler, redstart, northern 

 yellowthroat, ovenbird, and veery. 



Jacobs (1904) speaks of the anxiety of the parent birds if the nest 

 is disturbed when the nestlings are nearly ready to fly. He says: 

 "If the hand is placed near the nest at this period of their growth, they 

 will scramble out and flutter away, all giving vent to their chipping 

 note, which brings down upon the intruder the wrath of both old 

 birds, who fly close to his face, snapping their beaks and chipping 

 loudly; then down upon the ground they fall and feign the broken 

 wing act as long as one of the young continues to chirp." 



Voice. — The song of the golden-winged warbler is an inconspicuous 

 little buzzing sound which one might pass by unnoticed, or hearing it 

 for the first time, might ascribe it to a mechanical sound made by some 

 insect, not suspecting it to be the song of a bird. Only after we have 

 become thoroughly familiar with the song do we grasp its definite 

 character, so that we can pick it out even when we hear it in the 

 distance among a medley of other voices. In this particular it re- 

 sembles the songs of Henslow's and the grasshopper sparrows, which 

 are scarcely audible, and pass unregarded until well known. 



The male goldenwing sings generally from a high perch, often from 

 a branch bare of leaves; hence, once we find him, we can see him 

 plainly. When he sings he throws his head back so far that his 

 bill points almost to the zenith, and sings with it widely open, as if 

 he were pouring out a great volume of sound. The bird sings freely 

 from his arrival in spring until mid-June, about a month, often 

 devoting himself to long periods of singing from the same perch. 



981873—53 5 



