80 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



hanged upon when given his choice of trees, the gooseberry bush. 

 Its second choice is the willow. 



I will tell you of a very clever act of the yellow warbler, leav- 

 ing it to Burroughs and to Seton whether it is an act of reason 

 or of instinct. When the parasitic cowbird lays its egg in a yellow 

 warbler's nest, the warbler builds a false bottom over it and runs 

 the side walls up so as to make a second nest above for its own 

 egg, thus refusing to make its home an asylum for cowbirds. 



It is a wonderful nest that it builds and must be seen to be 

 appreciated. It is made of the silver-colored fiber of plants, the 

 silk of caterpillars, tiny bits of wool and fern do^^^l. What a 

 warm little nest it must be ! The yellow warbler raises but one 

 family a year and it must do it very carefully. 



MYRTLE WARBLER. 



It is always a pleasure to find one of the warblers, especially 

 one that is new to us. The myrtle warbler, however, is one of our 

 commonest visitants but is always of interest to a bird-lover. 

 They never reveal themselves to you at a single glance for they 

 are so very restless that there is ever something new for you, 

 though you have known them for years. 



A flock of at least a dozen of the myrtle birds spent a morn- 

 ing in one of my trees where, a few days before, the kinglets 

 made merry with the bugs. They were very familiar, probably 

 because they were finding a royal feast. 



It is too bad that some of our warblers cannot be renamed. 

 The redstart for example has a German name that means "red- 

 tail" but redstarts do not have red tails. They are either or- 

 ange or lemon. Probably they were called that for the same rea- 

 son that a grove (lucus) in Latin was named from the Latin 

 word lux, meaning light, because there is little light in a grove.. 



The Blackburnian warbler, that pretty little bunch of flame, 

 was named after Blackburn, whoever he was. Very likely he was 

 the first man to kill one. 



The worm-eating warbler has a repulsive name and it means 

 little more than to speak of the seed-eating sparrow or an insect- 

 eating flycatcher. 



The myrtle warbler is said to eat the berries of the myrtle, 

 hence his name. Though a very small part of his diet is myrtle 



