156 



THE BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER. 



the rising sun the brightest is Prometheus, the torch-bearer. Like a beacon 

 light his glowing breast sends a quick answering flash to the first greeting 

 of the eastern majesty, and drunk with joy, the tiny spark moves off to 

 set the woods on fire. When his back is turned you lose him in the upper 

 green, but once around and flash! flash! come swift messages of beauty from 

 this divinely fashioned heliograph. 



It is enough! You know him now. For the rest the Blackburnian 

 Warbler hops about, and Hits, and snatches hugs like other birds. Like 



III. 'HI. -(II I'll WOODS-U AKIIU-k CIIKM.K. 



man) others he too, alas! passes far north to breed, quenching his flame for 

 the season in the bosom of some gloomy hemlock. During the spring mi- 

 grations the brightest males are among the middle early comers, but the 

 paler females, and the youths witli breasts unlired, abound from the middle 

 to the twentieth of Maw and linger in rare instances until the end of that 

 month. The fall movement begins about the twentieth of August and lasts 

 through September. The summer nesting of this species is unusually suc- 

 cessful, to judge from the augmented numbers which appear during the fall 

 migrations. 



