FAMILY Mniotiltide. 
Islands and Nova Scotia south to central Minnesota, 
Michigan, central Ontario, New York, and Pennsylvania, 
in the higher hills of Massachusetts, and also in the moun- 
tains to West Virginia; it winters from Nicaragua to Ec- 
uador. It scarcely arrives in Massachusetts in its journey 
northward before the last day of May, but in New York 
it is due about the tenth of that month. 
The song of the Mourning Warbler is, like that of the 
Black-throated Green, brief but musically attractive. It 
is another example of a high-pitched lisping whistle which 
is difficult for me to reconcile with the syllabic forms of 
different authors, especially as these forms themselves are 
distinctly different, at least in rhythm. The song as I 
know it is a full, rolling, and not perfectly clear-toned 
whistle, ending with sharply staccato tones little if any 
below the opening tones, and they are so high in pitch, 
that to match them I have to resort to the lisping whistle 
produced behind one’s front teeth. It must ever be borne 
in mind that these Warblers’ songs belong at the extreme 
upper limit of the piano keyboard, hence the great diff- 
culty of an unmusical ear to appreciate the musica! inter- 
vals which are involved in the songs. Here are two records 
belonging to the Mourning Warbler both of which extend 
a bit beyond uppermost C. 
Vivace. Tie aa ane 
iy a 
i Al 4 de a a a a oa 
7. a pz Peg ss | 
[a ee ee | | See 
AS ae A SES oe RG = — Ea) LN ee — 
“ded OFT rutt, ruit, wit-it-it, TWhit whit, whit, With wit 
Three of the following authors quoted agree on the drop 
of the voice at the close of the song, and that scores an 
important fact. It is rather significant, however, that 
one of the two records above shows a drop of only a semi- 
tone below the initial note of the song. Merriam writes, 
‘Its common song consists of a simple, clear, warbling 
whistle resembling the syllables trué, trué, trué, tru, too, the 
voice rising on the first three syllables (meaning words not 
syllables) and falling on the last two.” Ralph Hoffman 
g08 
