106 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
when household duties do not interfere, they are busied, not 
with such marked activity as some other warblers, from dawn 
until evening, in searching among the branches of low bushes 
and saplings for the small caterpillars and insects upon which 
they feed. They do not usually make any demonstrations 
if their nest is examined, but remain quietly in the neighbor- 
hood of it until they can safely return. They do not attempt 
to lead off the intruder by feigning lameness, as many other 
warblers do, especially those who habitually build their nests 
on or very near the ground. 
(d). Their song cannot fail to attract the attention of every 
person who hears‘it, and who takes an interest in birds. Its 
notes, resembling the syllables zee-zee-zee-zee-zee-zee-zee, are 
uttered in a very peculiar tone, and each note is a little higher 
and louder than the preceding. The birds, on uttering it, 
frequently depress their tail. The ordinary note of the often 
silent Prairie Warblers is a chirr. 
(C) pennsytvanica. Chestnut-sided Warbler. 
(In southern New England, a common summer-resident.) 
(a). About 53 inches long. Back, light ashy-yellow, black- 
streaked. Under parts, white. Wing-bars the same, generally 
forming one patch. Crown, yellow, bordered by white. Lore, 
continuously with a line through the eye and one down to a 
chestnut-red patch on the side of the breast, black. 
(b). The nest is usually coarser than that of the Yellow 
Bird (A), and contains fewer woolly materials. It is often 
composed outwardly of narrow strips of thin bark or dried | 
grasses, mixed with a few bits of plant-down, and inwardly of 
very fine straw, which is lined with hairs. Such is the descrip- 
tion of two nests before me. The nests are commonly placed 
from two to eight feet above the ground in a low bush, shrub, 
or sapling, and are either built in a fork or otherwise secured 
(but are never pensile). The situations generally chosen are 
the ‘‘scrub-lands,” or open woods in low grounds which contain 
bushes, vines, etc. Near Boston they are usually finished, and 
contain four or five fresh eggs, about the first of June. The 
