250 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



but this has never been confirmed. He regarded it as a silent bird, and 

 Mr. Audubon does not compliment its A^ocal powers. Yet it is a pleasing 

 and varied, if not a powerful singer. Mr. Trippe speaks of its song as faint 

 and lisping, and as consisting of four or five syllables. 



None of our birds, Ijefore its history was w^ell known, has been made the 

 occasion for more ill-founded conjectures than the Black-l'oll. Wilson was at 

 fault as to its song and its Soutliern breeding, and imagined it would be found 

 to nest in high tree-tops, so as not to be readily detected. Nuttall, on the 

 other hand, predicted that it would be found to breed on the ground, after the 

 manner of the Mniotiltae, or else in hollow trees Mr. Audubon, finding its 

 nest in Labrador, indulges in flights of fancy over its supposed rarity, which, 

 seen in the light of our present knowledge, as an abundant bird in the local- 

 ity where his expedition was fitted out, are somewhat amusing. That nest 

 was in a thicket of low trees, contained four eggs, and was placed about four 

 feet from tlie ground, in the fork of a small branch, close to the main stem 

 of a fir-tree. Its internal diameter was two inches, and its depth one and 

 a half. It was formed, externally, of green and white moss and lichens, in- 

 termingled with coarse dry grasses. It was lined, with great care, with fine, 

 dry, dark-colored mosses, resembling horse-hair, with a thick bed of soft 

 feathers of ducks and willow grouse. 



In passing north, these Warblers, says Audubon, reach Louisiana early in 

 February, where they glean their food among the upper branches of the trees 

 overhanging the w^ater. He never met with them in maritime parts of the 

 South, yet they are abundant in the State of New Jersey near the sea-shore. 

 As they pass northward their habits seem to undergo a change, and to par- 

 take more of the nature of Creepers. They move along the trunks and lower 

 limbs, searching in their chinks for larvse and pupse. Later in the season, in 

 more northern localities, we again find them expert flycatchers, darting after 

 insects in all directions, chasing them while on the wing, and making the 

 clicking sound of the true Flycatcher. 



They usually reach Massachusetts after the middle of May, and their stay 

 varies from one, usually, to nearly four weeks, especially when their insect- 

 food is abundant. In our orchards they feed eagerly upon the canker-worm, 

 which is just appearing as they pass through. 



Around Eastport and at Grand Menan they confine themselves to the thick 

 swampy groves of evergreens, where they breed on the edges of the M'oods. 

 All of the several nests I met with in these localities were built in thick 

 spruce-trees, about eight feet from the ground, and in the midst of foliage so 

 dense as hardly to be noticeable. Yet the nests were large and bulky for so 

 small a bird, being nearly five inches in diameter and three in lieight. The 

 cavity is, however, small, being only two inches in diameter, and one and a 

 fourth to one and a half in depth. They were constructed chiefly of a 

 collection of slender young ends of branches of pines, firs, and spruce, 

 interwoven with and tied together by long branches of the Cladonia lichens, 



