CONNECTICUT WARBLER 



243 



would often remain securely hidden until nearly trodden on. Indeed 

 we learned eventually that the only certain method of starting all the 

 birds that a thicket contained was to beat the place closely and sys- 

 tematically many times in succession. When flushed they would 

 usually fly up into the low bushes and sit there motioness in thrush- 

 like attitudes, gazing at us intently with their large dark eyes. If fur- 

 ther disturbed, they were nearly sure to take long flights to distant 

 parts of the swamp During cloudy weather we sometimes found 

 them feeding with Blackpoll Warblers in the tops of large willows, 

 fifty or sixty feet above the ground. The earliest date on which they 

 were ever seen by us was September 7, and the last stragglers usually 

 departed for the south before the ist of October. They never appeared 

 in spring, nor is there a single record in which I have full confidence of 

 their occurrence at that season in an}^ part of Massachusetts." 



At Monadnock, Gerald Thayer (MS.) writes that the Connecticut 

 Warbler is "sometimes fairly common at Monadnock in the fall, from 

 mid-September to early October, in bushy roadside copses and damp 

 thickets in and near woods. In spring it is very rare here, we have 

 seen only two or three in the course of a dozen years." 



With Brewster he comments on the bird's thrush-like appearance, 

 saying : "As it appears about Monadnock in the Autumn, the Connecti- 

 cut has a curiously quiet and thrush-like demeanor. Starting up from 

 the ground, where it has been walking, it stops on a low perch and sits 

 dead still for several seconds, sometimes for a half minute or more, 

 before moving on, and then it usually flies rather far. The only note I 

 have ever heard from it is a very quick, sharp call, with a clipped-short 

 metallic ring, plink, easily remembered and differentiated among War- 

 bler chips. In immature plumage, as we commonly see it, it looks very 

 dark, and shows no definite markings whatever beyond the rather con- 

 spicuous white eye-ring, which adds to the effect of thrush-likeness." 



According to Ernest Seton\ who alone has found the Connecticut 

 breeding, the bird, in Manitoba, summers in tamarac swamps. Gault's* 

 observations in Aitkin County, Minn., indicate the breeding of the 

 species in similar localities at that place, while the taking of fledglings 

 by Warren^, on August 10, near Palmer, in the Upper Peninsula of 

 Michigan, considerably extends the probable nesting range of the 

 species. Warren remarks that at this point he saw over fifty Connecti- 

 cut Warblers on August 29, an observation which suggests that the 

 species is much more common in the Mississippi Valley than existing 

 records would lead us to believe. 



