EASTERN NASHVILLE WARBLER 107 



dant. On May 3, 1901, I witnessed a remarkable flight at Beaver. 

 That morning the woods everywhere were full of Nashville warblers, 

 to the exclusion of almost all other kinds. I counted a dozen in one 

 tree. They kept mostly in the treetops and were singing very little." 



These warblers are also sometimes abundant in Ohio, for Milton 

 B. Trautman (1940) noted as many as 80 individuals on May 16, 

 1932, at Buckeye Lake. 



Nesting. — The nesting haunts of the eastern Nashville warbler are 

 quite varied, and habitats similar to some of those frequented on the 

 spring migration seem to be suitable for breeding grounds. But 

 the nest is always placed on the ground and generally is well hidden. 

 Gerald Thayer wrote to Dr. Chapman (1907) : 



Birch Warbler would be a good name for this bird as it appears in the 

 Monadnock region where it breeds abundantly. For here it is nowhere so 

 common as in abandoned fields and mountain pastures half smothered by small 

 gray birches. From the airy upper story of these low and often dense birch 

 copses the Nashvilles sing; and among the club-mosses and ferns, and the 

 hardbacks and other scrubby brushes at their bases and around their borders, 

 the Nashvilles build their nests. But such is merely their most characteristic 

 home. * • • Dark spruce woods they do not favor, nor big, mixed virgin 

 timber ; but even in these places, one is likely to find them wherever there is a 

 little "oasis" of sunlight and smaller deciduous growth. They are fairly com- 

 mon among the scanty spruces, mountain ashes, and white birches of the rocky 

 ridge of Mt. Monadnock, almost to the top — 3,169 feet. 



F. H. Kennard records in his notes two nests found near Lancaster, 

 N. H. One was among some dead weeds on a mossy hummock in 

 a pasture; the other was in a swamp, at the base of and under a 

 clump of alders beside a path. Miss Cordelia J. Stanwood (1910), 

 of Ellsworth, Maine, writes : 



Wlien a growth of evergreens — pine, fir, spruce and hemlock — is cut, it is 

 succeeded by a growth of hard wood — gray, white and yellow birches, maple, 

 poplar, beech, cherry and larch — and vice versa. As the woodland is cut in 

 strips, there are always these growths in juxtaposition. Though the nest of 

 the Nashville is always placed among the gray birches, the inevitable strip of 

 evergreen woodland is near at hand, and a swale not far away. 



The nest of the Nashville is sometimes placed in comparatively low ground 

 (that is, compared with its immediate surroundings), in soft green moss under 

 an apology for a shrub, again in the side of a knoll covered with bird wheat 

 (hair-cap) moss, or at other times in an open space in the woodlands under a 

 stump, or tent-like mass of grass, or a clump of gray birch saplings. Around the 

 top is usually woven a rim of coarse, soft, green moss ; sometimes dried boulder 

 fern or bracken is added. The side coming against the stump or overhanging 

 moss lacks this foundation. The nest is lined with fine hay, if it abounds in 

 the neighborhood, or pine needles if they are nearer at hand. Sometimes both 

 are used. The red fruit stems of bird wheat moss and rabbit's hair are often 

 employed. One or two birds have preferred some black, hair-like vegetable 

 fibre for lining matter, one bird, horse hair. 



