524 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



see-ick." Another song I have heard uttered is a plain " tsee- 

 tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee" uttered in an ascending scale. 

 Their call is a "chip." 



Davie mentions a nest found by Dr. Merriam in New York 

 as situated about eight feet from the ground and ten feet from 

 the trunk on the horizontal limb of a pine tree. He also 

 records nests from northern Minnesota as being twenty or 

 thirty feet from the ground. 



In Maine the average is rather higher up, they seeming to 

 prefer to nest in the tops of the taller, slenderer spruces, hem 

 locks and firs not lower than forty feet and generally higher 

 up. An occasional nest is placed on a horizontal limb quite 

 well out from the trunk, but more generally in the dense tufts 

 near the top of the tree and close to the trunks. 



By aid of an opera glass such nests may be quite readily 

 located when the birds have young, as both sexes visit them 

 constantly to feed them. The birds are usually building the 

 first week in June and have eggs by the fifth to the fifteenth. 

 More generally four but occasionally five eggs are laid, these 

 are pale grayish or bluish white, speckled and spotted about 

 the larger ends with olive or reddish brown and lilac gray. 

 A set measures 0.68 x 0.49, 0.68 x 0.45, 0.70 x 0.48, 0.69 x 

 0.50. The nests are built as a rule with a foundation of spruce 

 or hemlock twigs, then rootlets, fine shreds of bark and lined 

 with feathers and fine rootlets. 



Mr. Minot mentions a pair feeding upon ivy berries, and 

 probably this species as well as the other Warblers in general 

 will eat vegetable food when insects cannot be obtained. In 

 general I have found large quantities of the wing cases and 

 harder body portions of beetles in the stomachs of such Black- 

 burnian Warblers as I have dissected, also unidentifiable grubs, 

 worms, larvae of various lepidopterous insects and similar 

 material. As a rule they feed by passing from limb to limb 

 and examining the foliage and limbs of trees, more seldom 

 catching anything in the air. 



