188 THE BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLER. 
BLACK and white and gray are sober colors in themselves, but a skillful 
arrangement of all three has produced a handsome bird, and one whose dainty 
dignity requires no meretricious display of gaudy reds and yellows. Warblers 
are such tiny creatures at best that Nature has given little thought to their pro- 
tective coloration. his plain-colored bird does not, therefore, shun the green- 
ery of fir and fern, and yet we feel a peculiar fitness when he chooses for a 
song station some bare dead limb, gray and sober like himself. 
Last year the first arrival in Seattle seated himself upon a projecting limb 
of a dead cedar which commanded the quiet sylvan depths of Cowan Park, and 
left him fairly abreast of the Fifteenth Avenue viaduct. Here he divided his 
time between song and enjoyment of the scene, sparing a friendly glance now 
and then for the admiring bird-man. His manner was complaisant and self- 
contained, and I felt that his little vocal offerings were a tribute to the perfect 
morning rather than a bid for applause. 
The song of the Black-throated Gray is quite unpretentious, as Mrs. 
Bailey says,* “a simple warbler lay, see-ce-sce-ee, ze, ze, ze, with the quiet 
woodsy quality of virens and ca- 
rulescens, so soothing to the ear.” 
It is this droning, woodsy quality 
alone which must guide the ear of 
a listener in a forest, which may be 
resounding at the same time to the 
notes of the Hermit, Townsend, 
Audubon, Lutescent, and Tolmie 
Warblers. Occasionally even this 
fails. An early song which came 
from a young male feeding pa- 
Taken near Blaine, Photo: (retouched) by the Author,  Uleutly among the) catkins of some 
“UPON THE OVERHANGING LIMB OF AN tall, fresh-budding alders, had some 
SiR ATED of the airy qualities of the King- 
let’s notes, “Deo déopli, du du du, deo déo pli, deo deo pli, deo deo pli’—a 
mere fairy sibilation too fine for mortal ears to analyze. Another said boldly, 
“Heo flidgity; heo fudgity,’ and “Heo flidgity, chu wéo.” 
This Warbler is of rather irregular distribution in the western part of the 
State, where alone it is found. A preference is shown for rather open wood- 
land or dense undergrowth with wooded intervals. The fir-dotted prairies of 
the Steilacoom area are approved, and the oak groves have their patronage. 
During the August migration I have found the bird almost abundant at Blaine. 
They are curious, too, and by judicious screeping I succeeded in calling the 
bird of the accompanying illustration down within five feet upon the over- 
hanging limb of an apple tree. 
a. Handbook of Birds of W. U. S., p. 419. 
