370 NESTS AND EGGS OF 



eggs will be almost wholly obscured by innumerable fine specks. The 

 sizes of two sets containing the smallest and largest eggs are as follows: 

 .56X .48, .59 X 48, .59 X 45, .56 X 47 ; .70 X 49, .68 X .47, .70 x .49, .68 x .49. 



658. Dendroica caerulea (Wils.) [98.] 



Cernleau TVarbler^ 



Hab. Eastern United States (west of the Alleghanies) and Southern Canada, east to Central New 

 York; south in winter to Cuba and Northern portions of South America. 



A beautiful little sky-blue feathered creature, and well named 

 Azure Warbler. Its home is in the top branches of trees in sylvian 

 groves, where it may be seen, sometimes in numbers, flitting about in 

 search of insect food, and uttering its peculiar syllables which sound 

 like zee^ zee^ see^ ze-ee-eep. It is not strange that the nest of this 

 species has been so seldom discovered, even where the bird is very 

 abundant during the breeding season. The nest is built in the higher 

 horizontal branches of forest trees, always out some distance from the 

 trunk, and ranging from twenty to fifty feet above the ground. The 

 Blue or Cerulean Warbler is an abundant summer resident in Central 

 Ohio, where it prefers damp woods for nesting. Mr. J. A. Allen 

 describes a nest and four eggs which were taken in Munroe county, 

 New York, June 7, 1878. The nest was placed in the forks of a small 

 ash, about twenty-five feet from the ground. One taken near 

 Drummondsville, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, and described by Dr. 

 Brewer, was built in a large oak tree, fifty feet from the ground. This 

 and another nest containing four eggs taken by Mr. Wm. Bryant at 

 Mount Carmel, Illinois, May 16, 1878, are in the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology. Mr. Allen states that the Mount Carmel nest was also 

 placed at an elevation of twenty-five feet.* 



Prof. Evermann gives the Cerulean Warbler as a common sum- 

 mer resident of Carroll county, Indiana. 



Mr. J. L. Davidson secured two nests of this species with eggs, 

 in Niagara county, New York, on June 8 and 23, 1888. They were 

 built in small basswood trees, about twenty feet above the ground. 

 On June 30 another nest was discovered, but was too high and 

 inaccessible. Two broods were observed in July in the same woods. 

 The nests are compactly made of fine, dry grasses, bound together 

 with spiders' silk to which are attached pieces of whitish lichen; the 

 lining is strips of bark and fine grass. 



The eggs are bluish-white or greenish-white, speckled with reddish- 

 brown and lilac, chiefly at the larger end, and often in the form of a 

 wreath. Mr. Davidson gives the measurements of two specimens that 

 were saved out of the first nest, as .70 x .52, .71 x .52. The second nest 



*Bull. Nutt. Onith. Club IV, 25-27. 



