SYLVICOLID^ — THE WARBLEES. 257 



nephew, Mr. C. B. Deyoe, Mr. Burroughs visited tlie same woods, in Eoxbury, 

 Delaware County, N. Y., in which he had in a previous year found the nest 

 of the jVIourning Ground Warbler. The trees were mostly hemlock, with an 

 undergrowth of birch and beech. They first noticed the parent birds with 

 food in their bills, and then set about deliberately to find their nest by 

 watching their movements. But the birds were equally vigilant, and watched 

 them quite as determinedly. " It was diamond cut diamond." They were so 

 suspicious, that, after loading their beaks with food, they would swallow it 

 themselves, rather than run the risk of betraying their secret by approaching 

 the nest. They even apparently attempted to mislead them by being very pri- 

 vate and confidential at a point some distance from the nest. The two watched 

 the birds for over an hour, when the mosquitoes made it too hot for them to 

 hold out any longer, and they made a rush upon the ground, determined to 

 hunt it over inch by inch. The birds then manifested the greatest conster- 

 nation, and when, on leaping over an old log, the young sprang out with a 

 scream, but a few feet from them, the distracted pair fairly threw themselves 

 under their very feet. The male bird trailed his bright new plumage in 

 the dust ; and his much more humbly clad mate was, if anything, more so- 

 licitous and venturesome, coming within easy reach. The nest was jilaced 

 in the fork of a small hemlock, about fifteen inches from the ground. There 

 were four, and perhaps five, young in the nest, and one egg unhatched, which, 

 on blowing, proved to have been fresh. 



The nest measures three and a half inches in diameter, and a trifle more 

 than two in height. The cavity is broad and deep, two and a third inches in 

 diameter at the rim, and one and a half deep. Its base and periphery are 

 loose aggregations of strips of decayed inner bark from dead deciduous trees, 

 chiefly bass wood, strengthened by fine twigs, rootlets, and bits of wood and 

 bark. Within this is a firm, compact, well- woven nest, made by an elabo- 

 rate interweaving of slender roots and twigs, hair, fine pine-needles, and simi- 

 lar materials. 



The egg is oval in shape, less obtuse, but not pointed, at one end, with a 

 grayish-white ground, pinkish when unblown, and marked around the larger 

 end with a wreath, cliiefly of a bright umber-brown with lighter markings of 

 reddish-brown and obscure purple. ' A few smaller dottings of the same are 

 sparingly distributed over the rest of the egg. Its measurements are .70 by 

 .50 of an inch. It more nearly resembles the eggs of the D. maculosa than 

 any other, is about five per cent larger, a little more oblong, and the spots 

 differ in their reddish and purplish tinge, so far as one specimen may be 

 taken as a criterion. 



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