136 BULLETIN 2 03, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



years ago, perhaps early in the last century or before, some hardy 

 pioneers hewed out a clearing in the forest that clothed the slopes of 

 Kocky Hill in Rehoboth, Mass., planted an apple orchard, and sur- 

 rounded it with stone walls. All traces of the old farm, if ever there 

 had been one, disappeared before I first visited the locality in 1888, and 

 the forest had begun to encroach on the old clearing. The apple trees 

 even then showed signs of old age and were profusely covered with 

 long festoons of that picturesque tree lichen, often called beard-moss 

 or old-man's-beard {Usnea harhata^ U. longissima^ or U. trichodea). 

 This old orchard was a mecca for all local oologists, and many a set 

 of eggs of the blue yellow-backed warbler was taken from it during 

 succeeding years. As time passed, the old trees gradually died, the 

 Usnea disappeared, the warblers ceased breeding there, and the forest 

 eventually reclaimed the land until today only the ancient stone walls 

 remain to mark the locally famous haunt of the blue yellow-backs. 



I can remember several other old, neglected orchards that were 

 similarly decorated with the long, gray-green lichen and that were 

 inhabited by parula warblers as nesting sites, but they all suffered 

 the same fate ; the orchard trees decayed and were replaced by woods 

 and thickets. During the early part of the present century this 

 warbler continued to breed commonly in Bristol County wherever it 

 could find trees infested with Usnea — around the edges of swamps 

 and along the shores of ponds, lakes, and sluggish streams ; but now 

 this lichen seems for some reason to have entirely disappeared from 

 the County, and the parula warbler has likewise disappeared, al- 

 though it may still breed in a few similar localities on Cape Cod, Mass., 

 where I have found it a few times in more recent years. 



Localities such as those described above seem to be typical of the 

 breeding haunts of the northern parula warbler, at least in New Eng- 

 land, southern New York, and New Jersey. Whether the presence 

 of Usnea is a sine qua non for the breeding haunts of this wood warbler 

 is an open question ; but it may safely be said that where this lichen 

 grows in abundance one is almost sure to find it breeding ; and con- 

 versely, where this lichen is scarce or lacking, the warbler breeds spar- 

 ingly or not at all. 



Farther westward, northward, and southward, where Usnea is 

 scarce or entirely absent, these warblers seem to find congenial haunts 

 in hemlock ravines and in other coniferous woods and swamps; but 

 even there they are more likely to be found where there is at least some 

 of one species or another of this lichen, or where the somewhat similar 

 Spanish moss {Tillatidsia usneoldes) grows. 



SfHng. — Parula warblers that have wintered in the West Indies 

 reach southern Florida during the first week in March. Dr. Wetmore 

 (1916) says that it "was the most common of the migrant warblers in 



