BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 379 



tie from the pastures. The walls are exceedingly thick, being 

 bound firmly together with fine roots, dry grass, into which are 

 woven the catkins of different willow kinds of timber, and is 

 delicately lined with down of various kinds of vegetation. The 

 location may be in the garden, field, swamp, lawn, forest, or 

 orchard. 



The eggs are greenish white, heavily spotted with brown 

 and lilac that occasionally spreads into splotches. The young 

 are often out of the nest by the twenty-fifth of June. I have 

 not yet decided that they do not rear the second brood occas- 

 ionally. They are common victims of the Cowbird's audacious 

 occupation of their nests with its own larger eggs, over which 

 the Yellow Warbler will sometimes build another, and second 

 story nest. 



The distribution of this species in the State, is almost univer- 

 sal, except on the marshes and open prairies. Mr. Grant does 

 not list them for the three counties in which his observations 

 were made, but directly west of them in Cass, Becker and Clay 

 counties they are registered as common. A few only remain 

 later than early September, but isolated instances have occur- 

 red when they have lingered into October. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Bill, lead color; head, all around and under parts generally, 

 bright yellow; rest of upper parts yellow olivaceous, brightest 

 on the rump; back, with obsolete streaks of dusky reddish 

 brown; fore breast and sides of body streaked with brownish 

 red; tail feathers bright yellow; outer webs and tips, with the 

 whole upper surfaces of the innermost one, brown; extreme 

 outer edges of wing and tail feathers olivaceous like the back; 

 the middle and greater coverts and tertials, edged witn yellow, 

 forming two bands on the wings. 



Length, 5.25; wing, 2.65; tail, 2.25, 



Habitat, North America at large. 



DENDROICA C^RFLESCENS (Gmelin. ) (654.) 



BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER. 



On the 10th, 11th, or 12th of May, there comes a sort of 

 Wood-warbler wave, like an unseen tide setting in from the 

 sun, and not the invisible moon. It seems as if every branch 

 of lofty tree or brush, or shrub, was tremulous with Sittings of 

 song-bird life half suppressed, half revealed, moving leisurely 

 toward the waiting northland. One catches a glimpse of some 

 ravishing form of varied colors to be instantly changed for an- 



