84 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part i 



sandy oakflats, pineries, and dense swamps. The bird frequented 

 hedgerows, roadside trees, swamp clearing, the edges of small water- 

 courses, and particvdarly the cottonwood trees growing so abundantly 

 along the banks of the Savannah River. Nests were in thickets, 

 usually adjoining open fields, and sometimes in bramble patches. 

 Preferred to all other locations were small canebrakes where the 

 canes were no more than one-third of an inch in diameter, and not 

 over sLx feet in height. The foundation and outer layers of the nest 

 were usually made of the dead leaves of this cane, even when the 

 nest had been constructed at some distance from the brake. 



Trautman (1940) states that in the Buckeye Lake region of Ohio 

 the species "nested wherever there was a fair amount of brush, and 

 all brushy thickets, fields and meadows, overgrown fence rows, 

 edges of woodlands, openings in wooded areas, and borders of dirt 

 roads contained nesting pairs. * * * Nesting birds avoided the 

 wetter portions of swamps, cleared fields, heavily grazed meadows, 

 pastures, and woodlots, and the most mature forests with little 

 shrub layer * * *." 



Maurice G. Brooks (1944), speaking of West Virginia, calls the 

 species a "characteristic breeding bird of the oak-chestnut forest at 

 all elevations. Much less common in the northern hardwoods, and 

 in coniferous forests, but abundant and generally distributed in the 

 oak-pine areas. I have not found it in the spruce forest." 



E,. S. Palmer (1949) says that in Maine several pairs sometimes 

 nest in a fairly extensive area of blackberry bushes and other brush. 

 They seem to be drawn together by habitat requirements rather than 

 by any tendency toward colonial nesting. Richard S. PhUlips (1951) 

 mentions specifically nests in red raspberry, wild raspberry, elm 

 seedling, elm sapling, silver maple sapling, wild rose, and ironwood 

 sapling. Nests were situated 5 to 200 feet from the woods. T. S. 

 Roberts (1932) states that the species occurs on prairies rather 

 infrequently in the groves of natural timber about lakes and streams. 



Wniiam Brewster (1906) describes a nest placed "in a clematis 

 vine trained on a wire trellis which screens the main entrance to my 

 museum. Although no one could enter or leave this budding without 

 brushing against the foliage of the vine, the birds completed their 

 nest, but they abandoned it after laying two eggs." 



Thus, nests are generally placed in crotches of shrubs or saplings 

 only a few feet from the ground in dense cover. Phillips (1951) 

 found the mean height above ground for 14 nests in Ohio was 

 31 inches. In Grady Coimty, Ga., Herbert L. Stoddard, Sr. (MS.) 

 has found nests at the end of a tung tree branch not over 18 inches 

 above the ground, but the more usual location in these trees is from 

 5 to 15 feet up. Evidently selection of the particular nest site, as 



