ORNITHOLOGIST 



[Vol. iS-No. I 



I then saw what a rare find I had made, 

 and immediately let a string down for my 

 little gun and shot Mrs. Warbler from my 

 perch in the tree. Along about this time 

 came Mr. Warbler, attracted by the noise 

 made by his spouse, and I took him in 

 also. Now to my story. After securing 

 ropes my next step was to place a roll of 

 cotton in the nest, which I did by putting 

 it on a long light pole and crawling out 

 as far on the limb as I dared. I next be- 

 gun cutting the green limb, which was 

 nearly three inches thick. After chopping 

 away for a half hour I succeeded in sever- 

 ing tlie limb, and after much care in 

 handling the lines I finally secured the 

 nest and five fresh eggs. After securing 

 this nest it was no trouble for me to find 

 their nests right along, and during the rest 

 of the season and the one following I found 

 no less than forty nests and secured about 

 twenty- five sets of eggs. They were all 

 located in sycamores, with the exception 

 of two, which were in oaks, they all being 

 placed way out on a limb in the same 

 manner as the Wood Pewee, and from 40 

 to 75 feet up. Tlie nest very closely re- 

 sembles atypical nest of Traill's Flycatcher, 

 only smaller, being made of precisely the 

 same material both inside and out. A 

 typical nest measures, inside diameter i .6 

 in. ; inside depth i.i in. ; outside diameter 

 2.6 in. ; outside depth 1.5 in. Out of a 

 series of twenty-five nests five contained 

 five eggs, sixteen four eggs and the balance 

 three eggs. The eggs cannot with cer- 

 tainty be distinguished from those of tiie 

 Yellow Warbler. 



Philo W. Sunt h, Jr. 

 St. Louis, Mo. 



[The two sets of eggs of Cerulean War- 

 bler in mv cabinet (with parent liirds) are 

 entirely diflerent from those of the Yellow 

 Warbler. The nests also are very differ- 

 ent from those described bv Mr. Smith. — 

 J.P.N.] 



A Few Days Among the Blue- 

 winged ^A^arblers. 



My experience of past years with this 

 species {IIrhiiiiit/top/ii7a pi/itis), has been 

 that on the last of May or the first of June, 

 when I found a nest, the eggs were oftener 

 heavil}' incubated than fresh, so the past 

 season I thought I would start a week 

 earliei'. 



I left the city on May 3ist, my object 

 being to locate the birds on their breeding 

 sites and see if they had commenced nest 

 building. I spent the afternoon of the 

 2ist, all day of the zzd and 23d tramping 

 over the country wherever I knew of a 

 suitable site, and at the end of the third 

 day I had an attack of the blues of the very 

 worst kind. 



The weather for the three days was raw 

 and cloudy and I located only one pair of 

 birds. I felt very badly over my poor luck 

 and told my farmer friend who goes with 

 me on all m}' egg tramps and knows as 

 much about them as I do, but who is no 

 collector, that I thought the birds had 

 deserted their old breeding grounds, and 

 that I did not think I would bother with 

 them any more that season as I felt sure they 

 were not there. He had more courage 

 than I had, however, and said that he 

 was not going to give up vvithout another 

 fight when I left him at the depot on Mon- 

 day evening, where he had taken me to 

 meet my train for the city. He told me 

 that the first bright, sunny day he would 

 look atter them again and that I would 

 hear good news from him before the week 

 was out. 



I did not have much hope of receiving 

 the good news he promised, but imagine 

 my surprise when on Friday of that week 

 I received a letter telling me to come up 

 on Saturday as he had found two nests. 



On the evening of the 2Sth I took the 

 train for my friend's place, he ineeting me 

 at the station when the train arrived. 



