24 Chamberlain on the Cafe May Warbler. [January 



occasional appearance near the Maine border during the breeding 

 season. A year later, in July, 1883, Mr. Arthur P. Chadbourne 

 captured a solitary example at Rothesay, some nine miles east of 

 this city (St. John), and this completed the record until June, 

 1884, when the nest and eggs were discovered just outside the 

 city limits by my friend and co-worker in this locality, Mr. James 

 W. Banks. For this is Bank's story that I am telling, he, with 

 characteristic generosity, desiring my name to be associated with 

 its rehearsal. 



The birds seen and heard at Edmundston were invariably on 

 the topmost branches of the tallest evergreens (usually spruces) 

 growing in the neighborhood. Our experience furnished us with 

 good and sufficient reason for remembering this fact. As the 

 birds were constantly singing, their general whereabouts was 

 easily discovered, but no small amount of patient searching was 

 required to catch sight of them ; and we soon found out that after 

 sighting and shooting a bird there was still much to be gone 

 through before it was in hand ; for after tumbling a short distance 

 it usually staid. The trees were too stalwart to be moved by any 

 shaking power we could command, so every successful shot en- 

 tailed a climb — and such a climb ! The branches of these spruce 

 trees were so close together we had to call up all our reserve of 

 muscle and skill to squirm through ; and in addition to this we 

 had to encounter the annoying twigs — rough, sharp little things, 

 with which the branches were thickly studded, and which tore 

 clothes, scratched faces, pricked the flesh as they rolled down 

 underneath our flannels, and made themselves generally disagi*ee- 

 able. And so it came about that the Cape May was associated 

 in my mind with the stately trees and the solitude of deep forests 

 — a solitude broken by the merry notes of these songsters, the 

 chatter of squirrels, the sigh of the swaying boughs, and by the 

 strong language of exhausted and exasperated collectors ; and, 

 because of these recollections, I was altogether unprepared for 

 my friend's announcement that a pair had built in a location of 

 an almost exactly opposite character. This nest found by Banks 

 was hid among a cluster of low cedars growing in an exposed 

 position, on a rather open hill-side, near a gentleman's residence, 

 and within a stone's throw of a much frequented lane. The nest 

 was placed less than three feet from the ground and within six 

 inches of the tips of the branches, amid the densest part of the 



