240 BULLETIN 2 03, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



extensive. It spends the winter farther north than any other wood 

 warbler, although more or less sparingly and irregularly in the 

 northern States, and its range extends through the Bahamas, the 

 northern West Indies, Mexico, and Central America to Panama. 

 There is no wonder that it is well known. But neither Wilson, 

 Audubon, nor Nuttall ever found its nest. 

 Spring. — Prof essor Cooke (1904) writes: 



The myrtle warbler is one of the first migrants to move northward. A large 

 flight struck the Alligator Reef lighthouse February 23, 1892, and some 60 birds 

 struck the Sombrero Key lighthouse March 3, 1889. By the middle of March 

 migration is well under way over all the winter range, and the foremost 

 birds keep close behind the disappearance of frost. * * * By the last of 

 March all the myrtle warblers have departed from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, and 

 the Bahamas. The latest recorded date of striking of this species at any of 

 the Florida lighthouses is April 8, 1889. By the middle of the month the latest 

 northbound birds have left southern Florida. * * * Most of the migrants 

 cross the Rio Grande into Texas about the middle of March, and it is the 

 middle of April before the last have passed north. 



Charles L. Whittle (1922) witnessed a heavy migration of myrtle 

 warblers along the coastal islands of South Carolina on March 4, 1920, 

 that seemed to have been influenced largely by the presence of the 

 waxmyrtle {Myrica cerifera). He says: 



Perhaps half a mile from the northeast end of Sullivan Island the belt of 

 waxmyrtle trees narrows to a width, measured northwest and southeast, of 

 about three hundred feet. Here, near a seashore resort, a road had been re- 

 cently cut across the belt of waxmyrtle trees at right angles to the sand bar. 

 Streams of warblers flying along the shore northeasterly from Folly and Morris 

 Islands, just south of the entrance to Charleston harbor, dropped to the land 

 and converged at the southwest end of the mantle of myrtle trees and passed 

 across the open swath cut for the new road. Posting ourselves here we counted 

 the birds moving northeast, minute by minute as they passed the opening, for 

 half an hour. The flight was continuous, many of the birds lighting on the 

 ground and trees from time to time, and the number crossing per minute varied 

 from twenty to two hundred, and accordingly averaged about one hundred 

 per minute. As far as we could judge the number was no greater than it had 

 been all the time since our arrival at the shore. Taking, therefore, the average 

 at one hundred per minute, 24,000 Myrtle Warblers passed northward between 

 nine in the morning and one in the afternoon. Not only so, but additional 

 warblers passed close by both to the east and to the west of the stream of birds 

 under observation. No doubt also the migration began prior to nine in the 

 morning and did not cease at one in the afternoon. 



He points out that the northern species of myrtle, or bayberry {Myrica 

 pensylvanica) , extends all along the coast from New Brunswick and 

 Nova Scotia to Florida; and he suggests that if these warblers prefer 

 to migrate along a coastal route where these myrtles reach their 

 maximum development and where the climate may be milder than 

 at higher elevations inland, it may explain why they generally arrive 

 in New Brunswick a week earlier than in Pemisylvania. 



