342 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



dant of our summer Warblers. Their favorite haunts in these towns are exten- 

 sive, well-matured woods of white pines, and rocky pastures glowing up to pitch 

 pines or to Virginia junipers. In several places of this character, on the crest 

 of the elevated ridge that extends from Arlington to Waverley, Black-throated 

 Green Warblers are so very numerous at times, even at the height of the breed- 

 ing season, that the songs of three or four different birds may be heard coming 

 from as many different directions at once. Their nests are usually concealed 

 among the dense foliage of one or another of the evergreen trees just men- 

 tioned, and placed at a height of from ten to thirty feet above the ground on 

 rather stout, horizontal branches or in upright forks of the main stems of the 

 trees. This rule is not without e.xceptions, for I have known the birds to build 

 in deciduous trees, such as birches and elms, and I have a nest that I found on 

 June 12, 1869, in a barberry bush growing in an open pasture at Arlington 

 Heights, one hundred yards or more from the nearest woods. It contained four 

 eggs on which the female Warbler was sitting. I saw her on the nest and shot 

 her just after she had left it. Another nest of the Black-throated Green War- 

 bler in my collection was found in a still more remarkable situation, viz., on the 

 ground, " among a large clump of ferns in a veiy low and damp place under a 

 heavy growth of hemlocks" (Auk, XII, 1895, 184). It was taken — with a 

 full set of eggs — at Chester, Connecticut, on June 18, 1894, by Mr. C. H. 

 Watrous, and was absolutely identified by the capture of the parent bird. 



In late summer and early autumn the present species is represented in 

 most ' mixed flocks ' of small, forest-haunting birds, and in such of these gather- 

 ings as frequent white and pitch pine woods it often occurs more numerously 

 and conspicuously than any other member of its family. But despite its inborn 

 preference for evergreen trees, which it never wholly lays aside at this or indeed 

 any season, it accompanies the motley troops, with which it associates during 

 July and August, on rambles which lead through covers of every conceivable 

 kind, including low oak scrub, scattered growths of gray birches, old apple 

 orchards and even thickets of alders and barberry bushes that have sprung up 

 in neglected pastures and along country roadsides. 



The Black-throated Green Warbler is especially abundant in the Cambridge 

 Region during migration when it appears practically everywhere and not at all 

 infrequently in our garden and other densely populated parts of Cambridge. 

 The spring flight begins late in April and continues well into May. In autumn 

 most of the birds pass to the southward of Massachusetts before the close of 

 September, but a few linger into October, and stragglers are occasionally seen 

 in November. 



