CONNECTICUT WARBLER 515 



keeps in the shelter of low brush and thick undergrowth, especially in 

 swampy places. Rarely does it venture more than a few feet above the 

 ground, and it pays little or no attention to 'squeaking.' " Forbush 

 (1929) mentions only one spring specimen for Massachusetts, but adds 

 several sight records that he considers reliable. 



Brewster (1906) says, however: "They never appeared in spring, 

 nor is there a single record in which I have full confidence of their 

 occurrence at that season in any part of Massachusetts." 



In the Mississippi Valley, it is a common spring migrant, occurring 

 rarely as far east as extreme western Pennsylvania, and more com- 

 monly from Ohio westward. At Buckeye Lake, Ohio, Milton B. 

 Trautman (1940) calls it "among the last of the warbler transients to 

 appear," and says : "In spring this warbler was found almost entirely 

 in brush tangles of the remnant swamp forests, and on only 2 occasions 

 was an individual seen in the upland type of woodlands." 



George H. Lowery, Jr. (1945), advances some grounds for assuming 

 that this and the mourning warbler "are at least in part" migrants 

 across the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi Valley. 



Nesting.— Seton (1884) tells of finding the first nest of the Con- 

 necticut warbler: "As I went on, a small bird suddenly sprang from 

 one of the gravelike moss-mounds. It seemed distressed, and ran 

 along with its wings held up, like a Plover just alighting. On seeing 

 that I would not be decoyed away, it ran around me in the same atti- 

 tude. Recognizing that it was the Connecticut Warbler, I took it, 

 and then sought out the nest in the moss. It was entirely composed 

 of dry grass, and sunken level with the surface." 



Forty years elapsed before any more nests were reported. These 

 were found by Richard C. Harlow, with the help of A. D. Henderson, 

 near Belvedere, Alberta. The latter writes to me: "In 1923, Mr. 

 Richard C. Harlow took at least two and, if I remember rightly, three 

 nests with eggs near Belvedere. I helped him hunt the last of these 

 nests on June 19, 1923, and secured a picture of the nest and eggs. 

 The nest, which contained four eggs, was well concealed at the side of 

 a bunch of dry grass, which overhung the nest, and it was a slight 

 hollow in the ground lined with dry grass, with an inner lining of 

 finer grass. The nest was in the open in rather short grass and weeds, 

 near the edge of poplar woods. The females are very secretive and 

 keep mostly to the ground or near it, and are difficult to observe. 

 Previous to finding this nest, I had started the female from the nest, 

 or close to it, and she crept away along the ground much after the 

 manner of a mouse." 



Another nest, found June 25, after Mr. Harlow had left, was on a 

 ridge covered with an open growth of fire-killed poplars, small bushes, 

 and weeds. "It was made of a few leaves on the outside, a few bark 



