WARBLERS " 521 



the twentieth and passing along by the eighth of June, being 

 very noisy and singing more or less constantly from the tree 

 tops so as to attract ready attention to its presence in spring. 

 In the fall the cohorts are fully as plentiful and inclined to be 

 in bands or flocks, but are silent and move southward from Sep- 

 tember eighth to October sixth without giving cause for notice 

 save to those seeking for them. As a summer resident the spe- 

 cies is confined to those sections of Maine within the Canadian 

 and Hudsonian faunae, being rather ultra Canadian as a rule. 



In migration they frequent the higher deciduous trees of the 

 city streets and highways, and the higher as well as lower trees 

 and bushes of the more open woods and groves, tending as 

 they pass northward more and more to evergreen woods until ' 

 when they reach their northern homes they are almost exclus-/ 

 ively confined to evergreen woods. Their song sounds like a 

 shrill, high pitched, monotonous " zip zip zip zee ze te." 

 Minot renders it as "tsi tsi tsi tsi tsi" while Jones in Warbler 

 Songs gives it as "tsip tsip tsip tsee tsee te." The alarm call 

 is " chip " or " tsip." 



The nests are built in evergreen trees, generally in spruces 

 or firs, at elevations of from four to ten or twelve feet from the 

 ground. The foundation of the nests is small spruce or fir 

 twigs, and the nests proper are made of lichens, rootlets and 

 fine grasses, lined with fine rootlets, grasses or feathers. The 

 eggs are four or five in number, and vary in ground color 

 from white to buffy or greenish white, spotted, blotched and 

 speckled with cinnamon or olive brown and lilac gray. Many 

 eggs are finely speckled all over but the general tendency is 

 toward a concentration of the markings toward the larger end 

 and the spots are also larger there. The tendency to wreath- 

 ing about the larger end does not exist and it is only rarely 

 that an egg can be called wreathed. June fifteenth to twenti- 

 eth is the average date to begin looking for eggs and fresh 

 eggs may even be found in early July. Eggs measure from 

 0.70 X 0.54 to 0.74 x 0.52. 



