294 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



Mr. Audubon states that this Warbler is the most common and abundant 

 species that visits the State of Louisiana and the whole region about the 

 Mississippi River, but is not so common in Kentucky or Ohio. He de- , 

 scribes it as an extremely lively and active bird, found in all the low grounds 

 and damp places near watercourses, and generally among the tall rank weeds 

 and low bushes growing in rich alluvial soil. It is continually iii motion, 

 hopping from stalk to stalk, and from twig to twig, preying upon insects, 

 larvse, or small berries, rarely pursuing an insect on the wing. He describes 

 its song as agreeable and emphatic. He has never known this species fly 

 farther than a few yards at a time. Its flight is low, and is performed in a 

 gliding manner. It makes its first appearance about the middle of J\Iarch, 

 and remains until the middle or last of September. He states that it rears 

 two broods in a season. His description of its nest, as " small, beautifully 

 constructed, and attached to several stems of rank weeds," etc., does not agTee 

 in position, size, or appearance with any that I have ever seen. 



According to Mr. Audubon, it feeds largely upon spiders, which it obtains 

 by turning over the withered leaves on the ground. The young birds resem- 

 ble their mother until the following season, when the males attain the full 

 beauty of tlieir plumage. They remain with their parents until they migrate. 



The late Dr. Alexander Gerhardt, an accurate and observing naturalist of 

 Northern Georgia, informed me, by letter, that the nest of the Kentucky 

 Warbler is usually built on the ground, under a tuft of grass, often on a liill- 

 side and always in dry places. The eggs are deposited from the 4th to the 

 15th of May. Nearly all the nests he met with were made externally of a 

 loose aggregation of dry oak and chestnut leaves, so rudely thrown together 

 as hardly to possess any coherence, and requiring to be sewed to be kept in 

 place. The interior or inner nests were more compactly interwoven, usually 

 composed of fine dark-brown roots. Instead of being small, tliey are large 

 for the bird, and are inelegantly and clumsily made. They measure four 

 inches in their diameter, three in height, and two in tlie depth of their cavity. 

 One nest, the last received from Dr. Gerhardt, obtained by him at Var- 

 nell's Station, in Northern Georgia, June 5, 1860, is large and peculiar in its 

 construction. It is nearly spherical in shape, with an entrance partially on 

 one side and nearly arched over. The periphery of this nest is composed 

 exclusively of partially decayed deciduous leaves, impacted together, yet 

 somewhat loosely. Within this outer covering is a fine framework of stems, 

 twigs, and rootlets, and witliin this a snug, compact lining of hair and finer 

 rootlets and fibres. This nest is six inches in diameter and five in height. 

 It contained four eggs. 



These eggs have an average length of .69 of an inch and a breadth of .56 

 of an inch. They have an oblong-oval shape, a crystalline-white ground, and 

 the entire surface is sprinkled over with fine dots of red and reddish-brown. 

 These, though most abundant about the larger end, are nowhere confluent, 

 and do not form a crown. 



