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A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of The Audupon Societies 



Vol. XX July— August, 1918 No. 4 



Notes on the Nesting of the Nashville Warbler 



By H. E. TUTTLE, Lake Forest, 111. 

 With photographs by the Author 



IT WAS mid- June at Lake Forest, 111., and a heaviness hung in the air 

 laden with the sweetness of the clover fields. My bird-season was draw- 

 ing to a close. I was strolling along a steep side hill, where birches and 

 azalea bushes made the walking difficult when, from between my feet, there 

 fluttered forth a little green bird which flew swiftly into the tops of the birches 

 and disappeared without a note of protest. To make assurance doubly sure I 

 looked for a nest and presently found it — a grassy cup set in a bit of moss under 

 a bunch of drifted leaves and crisp twigs. Wintergreen leaves and the withered 

 ends of the spring's arbutus carpeted the immediate surroundings. So well 

 hidden was it that I had to remove the roof of dead leaves, better to take my 

 pictures. 



When the five eggs had hatched, I returned with an umbrella tent which I 

 set up within a yard of the nest and inside of w^hich I installed my camera. 

 Even as I did so I had my second glimpse of the bird and knew it for the Nash- 

 ville Warbler. Leaving the tent to convince her by its lifelessness of the 

 innocency of my intentions, I wandered down the side hill to an open glade 

 where the Towhee nested under the dead bracken, and the Indigo Bunting 

 among the young sprouts, and where the tiresome lay of the Chestnut-sided 

 Warbler rose like a fountain day and night. An hour later I revisited the bhnd 

 and discovered the Nashville quietly brooding. Slipping under its far side, I 

 was soon inserting a plate-holder, and shortly after took a ten-second exywsure 

 of the bird. I made other exposures of equal length, and in only one out of 

 four did she move, and this was because a young bird underneath tried to 

 change its position. A lazy little song from the birch lops, which caused the 

 Uttle green bird on the nest to jerk her head up quickly and fly away, led me 

 to believe that Nashville pire was not overmuch interested in his growing 

 family. 



In a few moments his better half was back with a hunch of green cater- 



