MAGNOLIA WARBLER 201 



"He presented his first tender moths and juicy caterpillars to the 

 mother bird, who ate part of them, but the remainder she crushed and 

 mixed with digestive juices in her mouth and placed well down the 

 throats of the baby birds. 



"The little ones were not many hours old before the male insisted on 

 presenting to them a few tidbits himself ; and in a few days the parents 

 fed the young almost exclusively on fresh insect food, wliich grew 

 larger and tougher as the days went by." 



She mentions two attempts of the parent birds to draw her away 

 from their young : "Once I accidentally flushed a brooding magnolia. 

 The bird disappeared into the underbrush, but soon attracted my at- 

 tention to herself by calling from the top of a second-growth fir, a 

 few yards from where her precious secret was concealed. Then she 

 fell from branch to branch, striking the boughs with a thud, like a 

 dead weight, and dragged an apparently helpless leg or wing over 

 the ground, but always away from where her treasures were hidden. 

 On another occasion, when I visited a family of magnolias that were 

 quite ready to fly, the little ones spilled over the side of the cradle into 

 the surrounding grasses and ferns. Both parent birds, with spread 

 wings and tail, tumbled from all the seedlings in the vicinity and 

 trailed around in widening circles, calling piteously. At last the male 

 bird poised himself in air on fluttering wings between me and a callow 

 youngster, but the moment I lessened the distance between us he 

 vanished." 



Henry Mousley (1924) recorded his observations on two nests of 

 magnolia warblers, and found that during a period of 15 hours, at one 

 nest containing very young birds, the male fed the young 34 times and 

 the female 58 times ; the average rate of feeding was once in 9.8 min- 

 utes; the female did all the brooding for a total of 6 hours and 19 

 minutes ; the faeces were eaten 9 times and carried away 17 times, about 

 equally by each sex. 



Margaret Morse Nice (1926) made a very elaborate study of the 

 happenings at another nest ; her account, containing many interesting 

 observations, to which the reader is referred, is too detailed to be 

 quoted here. Her table shows that she watched the nest for a total 

 of 261/^ hours, spread over a period of 9 days; during this time, the 

 young were fed by the male 118 times and by the female 91 times; the 

 average rate of feeding was once in 7.8 minutes ; the female brooded 

 33 times for a total of 352 minutes ; the faeces were eaten 8 times and 

 carried away 38 times. 



Aretas A. Saunders (1938) writes: "After the young have left the 

 nest, they are much in evidence in the forests. As soon as this hap- 

 pens, whatever territory there was is abandoned. The young wander 

 away, keeping together, and the parents care for them, feeding 



