534 BULLETIN 2 03, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Egg dates. — New York : 44 records, May 24 to July 3 ; 24 records, 

 June 3 to 20, indicating the height of the season (Harris). 

 Quebec : 10 records, June 9 to 20. 



OPORORNIS TOLMIEI TOLMIEI (Townsend) 



NORTHERN MacGILLIVRAY'S WARBLER 



Plate 65 



HABITS 



Westerners seem to prefer to call this bird the Tolmie warbler, a 

 most appropriate name, on which W. L, Dawson (1923) makes the fol- 

 lowing pertinent comment : 



J. K. Townsend discovered the bird and really published it first, saying, "I 

 dedicate the species to my friend, W. T. Tolmie, Esq., of Fort Vancouver." Au- 

 dubon, being entrusted with Townsend's specimens, but disregarding the owner's 

 prior rights, published the bird independently, and tardily, as it happened, as 

 Sylvia macgillivrayi, by which specific name it was long known to ornithologists. 

 Macgillivray was a Scotch naturalist who never saw America, but Tolmie was 

 at that time a surgeon and later a factor of "the Honorable the Hudson Bay 

 Company," and he clearly deserves remembrance at our hands for friendly hospi- 

 tality and cooperation which he invariably extended to men of science." 



This pretty warbler closely resembles the eastern mourning warbler 

 in general appearance ; it frequents similar haunts and is much like it 

 in all its habits. Its breeding range covers a large part of western North 

 America from southeastern Alaska to central California and New Mex- 

 ico, including the Rocky Mountains and their foothills. Over most 

 of this region it seems to be more abundant than is the mourning war- 

 bler in the East. 



Samuel F. Rathbun, of Seattle, Wash., says in his notes that MacGil- 

 livray's is "a rather common warbler throughout the region, but of 

 unusual distribution. It is partial to localities more or less covered 

 with new growth, particularly if this happens to be scattered among 

 a confusion of dead and fallen trees, through which a fire has swept at 

 some little time previously, and over which nature is beginning to 

 throw a covering of young growth, this having a somewhat open ex- 

 posure. If such spots are contiguous to low ground, they seem more 

 apt to be frequented by this warbler ; but at times it will be found in 

 dry sections of this same rough nature." 



In Montana, according to Aretas A. Saunders (1921), it is "a com- 

 mon summer resident of the western half of the state, ranging east to 

 the easternmost mountains, and occurring occasionally in migrations 

 to the more eastern parts of the state. Breeds in the Transition zone 

 in clumps of willow and alder, wild rose or other shrubs, mainly in 

 moist situations along the foothills or lower mountain canyons." 



