THE BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER. 223 
breeds, though not nearly so abundantly as in those first 
mentioned. It arrives from the South from about the 25th 
of April to the 1st of May, in Massachusetts. I have often 
seen this species, as late as the last week in May, busily 
engaged in destroying insects (of which its food, as also that 
of the other Warblers, consists), apparently without being 
mated, as several individuals of both sexes were together, 
seemingly in harmony, but without those little fondlings 
and attentions peculiar to mated birds. The nest is seldom 
built before the 10th of June in this latitude. It is con- 
structed of fine grasses, fibrous roots, fine strips of bark from 
the cedar, and the leaves of the pine: these are entwined 
together strongly and neatly, and the interior of the nest is 
lined with horsehair and fine moss. Nuttall, in describing 
the only nest of this bird that he ever saw, says, — 
“On the 8th of June, I was so fortunate as to find a nest of this 
species in a perfectly solitary situation, on the Blue Hills of Milton, 
Mass. The female was now sitting, and about to hatch. ‘The nest 
was in a low, thick, and stunted Virginia juniper. When I ap- 
proached near the nest, the female stood motionless on its edge, and 
peeped down in such a manner that I imagined her to be a young 
bird: she then darted directly to the earth, and ran; but when, 
deceived, I sought her on the ground, she had very expertly disap- 
peared, and I now found the nest to contain four roundish eggs, 
white, inclining to flesh-color, variegated, more particularly at the 
great end, with pale, purplish points of various sizes, interspersed 
with other large spots of brown and blackish. The nest was formed 
of circularly entwined fine strips of the inner bark of the juniper, 
and the tough, fibrous bark of some other plant, then bedded with 
soft feathers of the Robin, and lined with a few horsehairs, and 
some slender tops of bent grass (Agrostis).” 
Early in June, 1863, a nest of this species was discovered 
in a grove of pines in West Roxbury: it was built in a 
small fork of a pine, about ten feet from the ground. The 
nest and its contents, four eggs, were removed; but the 
birds remained in the neighborhood, and soon commenced 
