34 JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



(Spinney). Somerset, common summer resident (Morrell). 

 Waldo, common in 1894 and 1899 at Uesboro (Howe, J. M. O. S. 

 1900, p. 31); common summer resident (Knight). Washington, very 

 abundant summer resident (Boardman). 



Mr. Brown found the species near Portland as early as May 

 loth, and from that date to the twenty-.second it arrived in spring, 

 and remained until September or even to October 9th. At Bangor 

 it arrives about May 15th and the last stragglers are gone by Sep- 

 tember 28th. They frequent the rather open, hard woods, thickets, 

 roadside deciduous trees, clumps of tall shrubbery, the bushy and 

 tree-lined banks of streams and ponds, and, in general, rather open, 

 deciduous growth. They prefer to keep fairly well up in the trees, 

 as a rule, peering around in the foliage and about the limbs, eating 

 various larvae of moths, butterflies, eggs of various insects, beetles, 

 lice, and catching on the wing flies, mosquitoes, gnats, perlids, cad- 

 dis flies, winged ants and similar insects. As they pass through 

 the foliage in short flights, they have a peculiar habit of expanding 

 their tails so as to show the yellow or salmon-colored basal por- 

 tions, also often drooping their wings. 



The male siugs frequently, and I would render the commoner 

 type of song as "chee, che, che, pa-pa." In "Warbler Songs," p. 36, 

 it is variously rendered as follows: "che, che, che, che-pa"; "wee- 

 see, wee-see-we," while Mr. Chapman is quoted as giving it the ut- 

 terance of "ching ching chee, ser-wee, ser-wee, swee, swee-e-e-e." 

 The female occasionally sings portions of these notes. As alarm 

 notes I have heard them utter a "c-h-e-a-p" in a plaintive tone, but 

 more often it is a "chip" or a "chick." 



The nests are placed quite variously, sometimes thirtj' to forty 

 feet from the ground in the crotch of a maple or elm, occasionally in 

 some other hard wood tree at a good elevation, but more frequently 

 the nests are placed lower down, at heights varying from six to 

 eighteen feet, in-second-growth maple, birch and beech thickets, or 

 in willow, poplar and elm saplings along the bank of a river or 

 stream and in a thicket. A nest found in the fork of a maple sap- 

 ling, eight feet from the ground, near the shore of the Stillwater 



