ORNITHOLOGIST 



—AND- 



OOLOGIST. 



81.00 per 

 Annum. 



PUBLISHED BY FRANK B. WEBSTER. 



Established, March, 187.5. 



Single Copy 

 10 cents. 



Vol. XVI. 



HYDE PARK, MASS., NOVEMBER, 1891. 



No. II. 



Nesting of MacGillivray's Warbler. 



Prying inti) tlie domestic arrangements of 

 tlii.s sprightly little Warl>ler (Geothi/liiis 

 mii'ciiiUirnii/i) has all the charm of uncer- 

 tainty, all the (lithculty which comes of 

 flashing through a bramhly brush, and mucli 

 of the unpleasant element wliich caused that 

 wondrous wise man of the jingle to jump into 

 another hu.sh and scratch them in again, 

 inasmuch as the bird's chief delight seems 

 to be somewhere near the eentie of a black- 

 berry bush, and the bigger and thornier the 

 bush the more frequently does liis lively 

 little song leak out between the leaves to tanta- 

 lize the enthusiast. Nobody but an enthusi- 

 ast would follow this will-o'-the-wisp long 

 in the thickets clo.se to the Willamette River 

 unless, indeed, a "Discourager of Hesitancy" 

 peeped over his shoulder. 



I renewed my acquaintance with G. 

 macyilHvrai/i this la.st spring on April nth ( $ ) 

 — two days later than my first meeting witli 

 his congenei', the Western Maryland Yellow- 

 throat ((?. t.riclMs oechlcntalix), and again on 

 the 18th (J), again on the 28th ($). 



The main body of migrants did not arrive 

 until May 4th. They kept close to the river 

 bank in compan.y with Pileolated AVarbler 

 (Sylrimia piisiUH pileolata) in the sort of woods 

 MelosiJtzii and Ilahiti frequent near here, viz., 

 Cottonwood and maple with a dense under- 

 growth of blackberry and salmon-berry liushes, 

 and were not on the hills with Audubon's and 

 Lutescent Warblers, though later on I found 

 them on the hills where a tir forest had been j 

 removed eight or ten years ago and a growth I 

 of scrub oaks, willows and the omniiiresent 

 blackberry were allowed to spring up. 



They are never as abundant near .Salem as 

 the Western .Maryland Vellow-throat ((? trirhas 

 (iccidcnttiUs) and do not frequent the open 

 swamps — the "s.vales" — as do the latter. 



and I have never seen them very far from 

 woods. The Maryland Yellow-throat (G. 

 trichas), on the contrary, I have seen along 

 ditches in perfectly open country. The river 

 and creek bottoms are their chief haunts in 

 the Willamette Valley. 



In the foothills of the cascades there is a 

 large "burn" fifteen to twenty miles wide and 

 thirty miles long, having its centre a little 

 northeast from Salem, Here MacGilIivra}''s 

 W^aibler is common, and doubtless breeds, as 

 I have killed ailults in June but have never 

 found a nest there, the very high and thick 

 fern making it all but impossible. 



During my residence in Salem I have seen 

 only nine nests of MacGillivray's Warbler con- 

 taining eggs — perhaps twenty containing 

 young, so that I consider the eggs collected 

 here more or less of a rarity. Of these nests 

 I found the earliest May i.5, 1887, and the latest 

 in the season June 8, 1891, though June 19, 

 1888, I found one containing five eggs already 

 pipjjed, (I .suppose I might have blown these 

 by the use of some of the artilicial digestive 

 ferments, ExIrarAmn pancreallx for example.) 



For several seasons 1 have found nests con- 

 taining young in various stages of develop- 

 ment about July 1st, On June 4, 1887, I 

 found a nest containing three young, just 

 hatclied, and one addled egg. 



This season I saw young able to tly June 

 30tli, and collected two sets of eggs, one noted 

 above, the other (1-4) May 18th, both fresh. 



The nest is loosely constructed as compared 

 with that of other Warblers, and, for .so small 

 a bird quite bulky, more bulky than the nest 

 of G. tricliax. The bird seems to prefer tine, 

 dry, round straws, grass stems, rootlets, etc., 

 rather than the flat blades of grass, strips of 

 inner bark and of tules and the skeleton leaves 

 of which tvlcliaii is so fond. 



The nest of trichas approaches more nearly 

 that of meluspiza — at least in the vicinity of 

 Salem — while MacGillirraiji is nearer the 



Cop.yright, 18.11, by Fb.\nk B, Webstek. 



