292 General Notes. [April 



The Blue-winged Warbler near Boston. — Walking in dry, scrubby 

 woods in the town of Brookline, Mass., May 19, 191S, Dr. Charles W. Town- 

 send and I found a Blue-winged Warbler ( Verrnivora pinus) singing the 

 typical song of the Golden-winged Warbler ( V. chrysoptera). The bird 

 had the bright-yellow throat, breast, belly, and crown and the black line 

 through the eye, and we had no hesitation in pronouncing it a Blue-winged 

 Warbler. As this species is regarded as extremely rare in Massachusetts 

 (see note by Mr. Horace W. Wright, Auk, 191 7, pp. 482, 483), the bird was 

 afterwards visited by other observers, some of whom saw it to better advan- 

 tage than we did and discovered that its wing-bars were yellow, not white 

 as in typical examples of the species. Among these observers were Mr. 

 Charles J. Maynard, Judge Charles F. Jenney, Dr. John B. Brainerd, Mr. 

 Barron Brainerd, and Mr. Henry S. Shaw. Mr. Maynard, who visited 

 the locality June 15 in company with Judge Jenney and Mr. Shaw, wrote 

 me under date of July 31, 1918: " I saw the bird very distinctly a number 

 of times and clearly saw that it had decidedly yellow wing-bands, not as 

 yellow as those of the Golden-winged, yet. decidedly yellow, and we heard 

 no other song than the one indistinguishable from that of the Golden- 

 wing. ... I was interested in trying to find whether the bird was mated, 

 but we did not succeed in finding any mate." None of the observers saw 

 anything of a mate, and none heard any other song from the bird than the 

 Golden-winged Warbler song. Illness in my family prevented my visit- 

 ing the locality again until July 10, when the bird was not to be found, 

 and the Golden-winged Warblers, two of which had been found there before 

 had also stopped singing. 



Forms of the Blue-winged Warbler with yellow or yellowish wing-bars 

 are not very rare in collections, and Dr. Louis B. Bishop, who has a large 

 series of this species, makes particular mention of them in his paper on 

 ' The Status of Helmirtthophila leucobronchialis and Helminthophila 

 Uwrencei ' in 'The Auk,' 1905, XXII, p. 21-24. In the light, however, of 

 Dr. Walter Faxon's discovery of the hybrid nature of Brewster's Warbler it 

 seems probable that these non-typical examples are really of mixed ancestry 

 and possess a modicum of chrysoptera blood. This seems the more likely 

 in the case of our Brookline bird because it sang the chrysoptera song, as 

 do most, if not all, of the leucobronchialis found in this region. Mr. William 

 Brewster permits me to rite him in support of this theory, and Dr. Bishop 

 writes me, " I think it quite possible your bird had a ' lawrencei ' as a more 

 or less remote ancestor, which means chrysoptera nf -ourse farther back, 

 added to its predominant pinus blood." 



Though our bird was found, as I have stated, in the town of Brookline, 

 the cities of Boston and Newton also corner near by, and, as Judge Jenney 

 has pointed out to me, it doubtless had in its daily range not only these 

 three munir ipalities but also the three counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and 

 Middlesex to which they severally belong. — Francis H. Allen, West 

 Roxbury, Mass. 



