324 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



a rare species and believed tliat it was chiefly confined to regions south of New 

 England. Dr. Samuel Cabot once told me that he was very sure it did not occur 

 regularly in eastern Massachusetts when he was at Harvard College (1832- 1836). 

 The first specimen he saw was found dead in a barn in Brookline at the close of 

 an autumnal storm which occurred during this period. Soon afterwards a few 

 birds began to appear every season. They increased in numbers, gradually but 

 steadily, until they had become so common that in 1842 he obtained ten speci- 

 mens in the course of a single morning. 



In 1868, and for some fifteen years later, I found Nashville Warblers breed- 

 ing rather numerously in Waltham, Lexington, Arlington and Belmont, usually 

 in dry and somewhat barren tracts sparsely covered with gray birches, oaks or 

 red cedars, or with scattered pitch pines. A few birds continue to occupy cer- 

 tain of these stations, but in all of the towns just mentioned the Nashville 

 Warbler is less common and decidedly less generally distributed in summer now 

 than it was twenty-five or thirty years ago. 



For a week or two in May, when they are passing northward on migra- 

 tion, Nashville Warblers are often abundant throughout most of the Cambridge 

 Region. At this season they resort freely to apple orchards near farmhouses 

 and by no means rarely to our city parks and gardens. During the return 

 flight, which takes place late in August and early in September, they frequent 

 woodlands almost exclusively and are seldom very numerously represented. 



ig8. Helminthophila celata (Say). 

 Orange-crowned Warbler. Orange-crown. 



Rare transient visitor in autumn. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



September 30, 1885, one ad. male' taken, Belmont, H. W. Henshaw. 



October 5 — November 15. 

 November 28, 1891, two seen, Cambridge, S. W. Denton. 



Until somewhat recently I have believed the Orange-crown to be one of the 

 very rarest of our migratory Warblers, but the experiences which I am about to 

 relate would seem to indicate that it may visit eastern Massachusetts oftener 



' No. 10,908, collection of William Brewster. 



