194 



BAY-BREASTED WARBLER 



Brewster^ saw "upwards of forty'' Bay-breasts near Cambridge, Mass. 

 Usually, however, he remarks, they "occur singly and in dense woods, 

 especially such as consist largely of white pines, hemlocks or other 

 coniferous trees." 



"The southward flight of Bay-breasts," this author continues, 

 "sometimes begins as early as August 23 and usually lasts nearly 

 through September. At this season the birds are given to frequenting 

 gray birches and dense, swampy maple woods and are nearly always 

 found in company with Blackpoll Warblers." 



The Bay-breast, Gerald Thayer writes, is "often common at 

 Monadnock in the spring migration, and may possibly breed here. 

 Apparently it is never common in the fall. It associates often with 

 Blackpolls, in loose bands, which drift through the scrub-lands and 

 forest-borders like bands of Titmice. But the Bay-breasts usually 

 leave Monadnock for the north at least a week before the Blackpolls. 



"Bay-breasts and Blackpolls alike are rather big and rather dusk- 

 ily-adorned Warblers, and both have an almost vireo-like leisureliness 

 of movement. Adult male Bav-breasts in life are apt to look very dark ; 

 — heavily clouded with deep brown and gray, relieved by a conspicu- 

 ously bright, big, white-buff spot on each side of the fore-neck. 

 Females look much like female Blackpolls, but are grayer — less green 

 — and usually show some blurred pale chestnut flecks on their sides. 

 The call-notes of these two twin-like species (Bay -breast and Black- 

 poll) I have never learned to tell apart. They are fine and sharp, but 

 sometimes louder than the average Dendroicine tsipping." {Thayer 

 MS.) 



About Umbagog, wheie it breeds, Maynard^ found the Bay- 

 breast the most abundant Warbler. It inhabited all the wooded sec- 

 tions and frequented the tops of tall trees. 



Song. — "Heard from migrants the Bay-breast's song is a poor, 

 weak, monotonous saw-filing note" (Farzvell, MS.) 



Widmann records the full song at St. Louis, on September 26, 



1897. 



"In a grouping based on songs, the Bay-breast should stand in a 

 quintette with the Blackburnian, the Blackpoll, the Black and White 

 and the Cape May. These five heard singing together in the same 

 trees, as I have heard them on the Hudson River, make 'confusion 

 worse than death' for any bird-student but the most adept. But with 

 patience and a good ear one can learn to differentiate them surely. 

 All five are thin-voiced, 'sibilant', singers ; but each has its own slight, 

 prevailing peculiarity of tone, in addition to the differences, varied 



