344 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



like, tak; tak, tak; tak," and this was the only note heard by Laing 

 late in July, when the birds had stopped singing. 



Field marks. — All the Locustellas are small warblers with strongly 

 graduated tails, which spend most of their time creeping or running 

 about among vegetation near the ground and rarely show themselves 

 at all freely except when singing. Stejneger (in Ridgway, 1884) 

 describes Middendorff's grasshopper-warbler as "slipping between the 

 stems and branches near the ground * * * with his tail held 

 upright, very much in the manner of a long- tailed wren." This 

 species has brown upperparts with only faint markings in the case of 

 L. o. ochotensis or none in L. o. pleskei. The lateral tail feathers 

 have a subterminal blackish band and dull white tips. A photograph 

 of L. o. pleskei is given in Yamashina's paper already quoted. 



Winter. — Owing to its very secretive disposition little is recorded 

 about the habits of this species outside the breeding season, but it is 

 evident that they are very much the same as on the nesting ground 

 except for the absence of song. It frequents reed beds and other 

 rank vegetation largely, if not entirely, near water or in marshy 

 places. La Touche (1930) met with pleskei in numbers in mangroves 

 at Swatow in May, "running along the banks of the lagoons on the 

 mud under the mangrove-bushes," and no doubt it may be found 

 under similar conditions on the fall passage. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Summer range. — L. o. ochotensis: Kamchatka, Commander Islands, 

 coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, Sakhalin, and the Kurile Islands. L. o. 

 pleskei: Korea and neighboring islands (known breeding places 

 Dagelet, Quelpart, Hachibi, and Schichihatsu Islands), Kyushu, and 

 the Seven Isles of Izu off Honshu. Recorded also on Honshu and 

 Hokkaido, but breeding not proved. 



Winter range. — Philippines, Borneo, Celebes, and Southwestern 

 (Serwatti) Islands. On passage in Japan and China. 



POLIOPTILA CAERULEA CAERULEA (Linnaeus 



BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER 



HABITS 



Contributed by Francis Marion Weston 



Our acquaintance with a new bird dates, it seems to me, not from 

 the moment we learn to identify it in the field but rather from the 

 first time we really have a glimpse of its "personality." Thus, my 

 "first" blue-gray gnatcatcher was certainly not the one my ornitho- 

 logical mentor first pointed out to me, but another that came along 

 months later, flitted to a bush within arm's length of where I stood 



