Species XXXIII. SYLVIA LEUCOPTERA* 



PINE-SWAMP WARBLER. 



[Plate XLIII. Fig. 4.] 



This little bird is for the first time figured or described. Its favorite 

 haunts are in the deepest and gloomiest pine and hemlock swamps of 

 our mountainous regions, where every tree, trunk, and fallen log is 

 covered with a luxuriant coat of moss, that even mantles over the sur- 

 face of the ground, and prevents the sportsman from avoiding a thousand 

 holes, springs and swamps, into which he is incessantly plunged. Of 

 the nest of this bird I am unable to speak. I found it associated with 

 the Blackburnian Warbler, the Golden-crested Wren, Ruby-crowned 

 Wren, Yellow Rump, and others of that description, in such places as 

 I have described, about the middle of May. It seemed as active in fly- 

 catching as in searching for other insects, darting nimbly about among 

 the branches, and flirting its wings ; but I could not perceive that it 

 had either note or song. I shot three, one male and two females. I 

 have no^loubt that they breed in those solitary swamps, as well as many 

 other of their associates. 



The Pine-swamp Warbler is four inches and a quarter long, and seven 

 inches and a quarter in extent; bill black, not notched, but furnished 

 with bristles ; upper parts a deep green olive, with slight bluish reflec- 

 tions, particularly on the edges of the tail and on the head ; wings 

 dusky, but so broadly edged with olive green as to appear wholly of that 

 tint ; immediately below the primary coverts there is a single triangular 

 spot of yellowish white ; no other part of the wing is Avhite ; the three 

 exterior tail feathers with a spot of white on their inner vanes ; the tail 

 is slightly forked ; from the nostrils over the eye extends a fine line of 

 white, and the lower eyelid is touched with the same tint ; lores blackish ; 

 sides of the neck and auriculars green olive ; whole lower parts pale 

 yellow ochre, with a tinge of greenish, duskiest on the throat ; legs long 

 and flesh colored. 



Tlie plumage of the female diff"ers in nothing from that of the male. 



* Wilson first called this bird pusilla, but that name being preoccupied, he 

 chanf^cd it in the index to leucoplera ; tiiis latter name is also preoccupied, and 

 Prince Musignano has proposed that it should be called S. sphagnosa. 



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