94 



NASHVILLE WARBLER 



Fall Migration. — The arrival of migrants south of their breeding 

 grounds has been noted at Chicago, 111., August i6, 1896; Beaver, Pa., 

 September 5, 1903; Ossining, N. Y., August 11; Englewood, N. J., 

 August 26, 1887; Washington, D. C, September 5; French Creek, 

 W. Va., September 7, 1890; St. Louis, Mo., September 17, 1885, and 

 at Gainesville, Texas, October 11, 1885. 



PIvACE 



Lanesboro, Minn 



Grinnell, Iowa 



Ottawa, Ont 



Mackinac Island, Mich 



North River, Prince Edward Island. 



St. John, New Brunswick 



Southern Maine 



Renovo, Pa 



Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y 



Cooney, N. Mex 



Dunlap, Cal 



No. of 

 years' 

 record 



Average date of 

 last one seen 



September 

 September 



September 

 September 

 September 

 October 3 



l,atest date of last 

 one seen 



September 29, 1889 

 October i, 1886 

 October 10, 1900 

 September 24, 1889 

 August 10, 1887 

 September 5, 1895 

 September 27, 1902 

 October 3, 1902 

 October 7, 1888 

 September 30, 1889 

 October 12, 1890 



The Bird and its Haunts. — Wilson, the discoverer of this species, 

 found only the three specimens, taken near Nashville, Tennessee, on 

 which his description was based ; and, in the early part of the last 

 century it was considered a rare bird. Brewster^, quoting Samuel 

 Cabot, says that soon after 1836 "a few birds began to appear every 

 season. They increased in numbers, gradually but steadily, until they 

 had become so common that in 1842 he obtained ten specimens in the 

 course of a single morning." 



Recounting his own experience in the Cambridge region, 

 Brewster' adds: "In 1868, and for some fifteen years later, I found 

 Nashville Warblers breeding rather numerously in Waltham, Lexing- 

 ton, Arlington and Belmont, usually in dry and somewhat barren 

 tracts sparsely covered with gray birches, oaks or red cedars, or with 

 scattered pitch pines. A few birds continued to occupy certain of 

 these stations, but in all of the towns just mentioned the Nashville 

 Warbler is less common and decidedly less generally distributed in 

 summer now than it was twenty-five or thirty years ago." 



Gerald Thayer writes: "'Birch Warbler' would be a good name 

 for this bird as it appears in the Monadnock region where it breeds 

 abundantly. For here it is nowhere so common as in abandoned fields 

 and mountain pastures half smothered by small gray birches. From 

 the airy upper story of these low and often dense birch copses the 

 Nashvilles sing; and among the club-mosses and ferns, and the hard- 



