BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 385 



the 12th of May, and remain, or rather the species remains 

 represented, some twelve to fifteen days. In some respects it 

 is the counterpart of the last species described, one of which 

 is manifest in its habit of feeding almost exclusively in the 

 tops of the trees. I might enumerate others, but Langille has 

 described them so well that a quotation from his ' ' Birds in 

 their Haunts," pages 25 and 26, serves me quite as well. He 

 says: — "I have had every opportunity of observing its habits; 

 and, as no writer has given it a full record, I bear it a special 

 accountability. It is a bird of the woods, everywhere asso- 

 ciated with the beautiful, tall forests of the northern counties 

 of western New York, sometimes found in the open woods of 

 pasture lands and quite partial to hardwood trees. In its 

 flittering motion in search of insect prey, and in the jerking 

 curves of its more prolonged flight, as also in structure, it is a 

 genuine wood warbler, and keeps for the most part to what 

 Thoreau calls 'the upper story' of its sylvan domain. Its 

 song, which is frequent and can be heard some distance, may 

 be imitated by the syllables rheet, rheet, rheet, rheet, ridi, idi-e-e- 

 e-ee, beginning with several soft, warbling notes and ending in 

 a rather prolonged but quite musical squeak. The latter 

 and more rapid part of the strain, which is given in the 

 upward slide, approaches an insect quality of tone, which is 

 more or less common to all blue warblers. This song is so 

 common here as to be a universal characteristic of our tall 

 forests. The bird is shy when startled from its nest, and has 

 the sharp, chirping alarm note of the family. The nest is 

 saddled on a horizontal limb of considerable size, some dis- 

 tance from the tree, and some forty or fifty feet from the 

 ground. Small and very neatly and compactly built, some- 

 what after the style of the redstart, it consists outwardly of 

 fine, dried grasses, bits of. wasps' nest, gray lichen, and more 

 especially of old and weathered wood fibers, making it look 

 quite gray and waspy. 



"The lining is of fine, dried grasses, or of fine shreds of the 

 wild grapevine, thus giving the inside a rich brown appear- 

 ance in contrast with the gray exterior. The eggs, four or 

 five, some .60 by .47, are grayish or greenish- white, pretty 

 well spotted or specked, or even blotched, especially aoout the 

 large end, with brown and deep lilac. They do not possess 

 that delicate appearance common to the eggs of most of the 

 warblers. " 



