126 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
notes. In October I have once or twice heard the ‘* Yellow- 
rumps ” utter a warble, which was soft, sweet, and very rich. 
(M) macutosa. Black and Yellow Warbler. ‘* Magnolia 
Warbler.” 
(A rather rare migrant through Massachusetts.) 
(a). About five inches long. Dark above. Rump, yellow. 
Crown ashy (-blue?). Forehead and a broad bar through the 
eye, black. Under parts yellow; breast black-streaked. Wing- 
patch, ete., white. 2, with head-markings and streaks less 
distinct. 
(b). The nest is usually built in a low spruce, often near a 
path through the woods, three or four feet from the ground, 
and is finished in the first week of June. (A second is some- 
times built about the first of July.) It is composed outwardly 
of pine-needles, hemlock-twigs, or the like, and is lined with 
horse-hairs or the black fibres of a certain moss. The eggs 
average ‘63 & ‘50 of an inch, and are white with lilac and 
brown, or umber-brown, markings, often forming a ring about 
the crown. Some eggs of this species which I found in North- 
ern New Hampshire are clouded at the larger end with obscure 
lilac and three shadés of a beautiful, bright, but peculiar 
brown. 
(c). The Black and Yellow Warblers are perhaps, with the 
exception of the Blackburnian Warblers, the handsomest of 
their family, and therefore it is to be regretted that they are in 
Massachusetts only for a short time in the latter part of May, 
being even then not common. They arrive here about the 
middle or twentieth of that month, and linger for a few days, 
but, after having passed the summer in the woods of Canada, 
Northern New Hampshire, and Maine, return to the South by 
an inland route, avoiding this State, or at least the eastern 
part of it. Whilst here, they frequent woods, trees, and 
shrubbery of various kinds, particularly spruces, generally in 
pairs or singly. They do not exhibit so many traits of the 
flycatchers as several other warblers do, but usually catch in- 
sects in the air, only as they move from one tree to another. 
