THE BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER, 



{Dendroica ccerulescens.) 



LYNDS JONES. 



THE bird-lover has many red-letter 

 days in his calendar, particularly 

 when the birds are moving 

 northward. The earliest arriv- 

 als, while snow still covers the ground, 

 give their own peculiar thrill of delight, 

 and waken in him new energy and 

 great anticipations for the coming sea- 

 son of bird study. But these early 

 arrivals soon become a part of the 

 landscape and cease to lend any pe- 

 culiar delight. Not so with the host of 

 warblers, for they are here one day and 

 may be up and away the next, not to be 

 seen again for two or three months or 

 even a year. One must be on the alert 

 during warbler time if he expects to 

 catch a glimpse of the passing host. 

 But there are distinctively "warbler 

 days" during this warbler time. These 

 vary in different years with the weather 

 and the advance of vegetation, from 

 late April to the second or even 

 third week of May, in northern Ohio 

 and central Iowa, and proportionately 

 later or earlier north or south of that 

 latitude. 



The subject of our sketch is not 

 among the early migrating warblers nor 

 yet among the later ones. He usually 

 travels with the second large flight, and 

 may then be expected late in April or 

 early in May. The earliest Oberlin, 

 Ohio, record falls on April 27, 1896, 

 and the latest on May 10, 1897. 

 Whether the birds arrive early or late 

 they usually remain in the vicinity two 

 weeks, the males being present during 

 the first week and the females during 

 the second. I have never found the 

 two sexes present on the same date. 

 The species cannot be said to be com- 

 mon even during the height of the 

 spring migration, nor yet are they rare. 

 Few are seen during the fall migration 

 at Oberlin, and they during the last 

 week of September and the first week 

 of October. Further west in the Mis- 

 sissippi valley the fall migrants seem 

 greatly to outnumber those of spring. 



This is not a tree-top inhabiting spe- 

 cies, but seems to prefer the middle 

 branches of the trees or the tops of 

 shrubbery, often descending to the 

 ground and gleaning there much after 

 the fashion of the Maryland Yellow- 

 throat. In the higher woods free from 

 underbrush he seems to prefer ground 

 gleaning, but where low underbrush 

 affords a place for low gleaning he is 

 seldom seen on the ground. In village 

 parks he is fond of a much higher 

 perch, and must be looked for there 

 well up in the trees, even to the top- 

 most branches, where he gleans among 

 the bursting buds and new leaves. On 

 the Oberlin College campus he is a reg- 

 ular spring visitor in early May, and 

 here seems to appreciate his environ- 

 ment and rare opportunities, for he 

 sings his best to the accompaniment of 

 the medley of pianos in the Conserva- 

 tory of Music across the way, and the 

 deeper tones of the great pipe organ in 

 the chapel hard by. Here I have heard 

 him singing at all hours of the day, 

 while in the woods his song is less often 

 given. One is at a loss to assign a rea- 

 son for the decided preference for the 

 college campus, which is in the center 

 of the village activities. Rumbling 

 wagons and tramping feet cause the 

 birds not the slightest alarm, but swiftly 

 moving bicycles act upon the birds' 

 nervous system much as upon that of 

 an elderly woman. 



The song of this warbler is variously 

 rendered by the various writers upon 

 bird songs. None of these renderings 

 seems to describe the song as I hear it 

 on the college campus. It is singing 

 as I write: "T^w euu euu e-e-e-e-ef" A 

 variation sounds, '"'C'weu, cweu, c'wee- 

 e-e-e ;'' sometimes ''cweu, c'weu, c'w', 

 c'w\ c'wee-ee-e-e-e." There is also often 

 a single phrase which sounds more like 

 a scolding note than a song. It is: 

 ''Tw\ tw\ tw\ tw' , tivee'e-e-e-e-e," or 

 even '"Z-z-e-e-e-e" rarely it rriay 

 sound simply ''Z-z-z-z-z-z." The song 



