Vol -i^9 XVI ] General Notes. 583 



for want of something better, might be compared with the song of the 

 Parula Warbler, a short buzzing trill rising in the scale, much louder and 

 less lispy than the song of the Parula. The songs were each of about one 

 second duration, rendered approximately eight or ten times per minute. 

 Altogether the performance was quite musical, in sweetness far above the 

 average warbler song. These two songs were generally alternated with 

 clock-like regularity, though occasionally the bird preferred to dwell upon 

 one or other of his selections for the greater part of the day. Like the 

 Blackpoll Warbler and some others, the beak was opened very wide while 

 singing, a great help in connecting bird and song. 



The fact that the bird was so closely confined to a very restricted area 

 gave us great hope of finding a nest, which hope, however, was not realized. 

 Neither did we succeed in identifying a female, but on the 27th of June, 

 the day before we were obliged to leave, our bird was seen carrying food in 

 his beak, which was rather good circumstantial evidence that the Cerulean 

 Warbler was breeding in the Catskills. — S. Harmsted Chubb, New York 

 City. 



Carolina Wren ( Thryothorus I. ludooicianus) Nesting in Rhode Island. 



— On August 1 I arrived for a few weeks stay in Bristol, R. I., and at once 

 was attracted by the notes of a Carolina Wren from a swampy thicket 

 behind the house on Metacom Avenue where I was living. On August 2 

 I secured a glimpse of both parents and one of the young. This is, I 

 believe, the second record for this species in Bristol, and the fifth for the 

 State, though I have not followed the avifauna of the State for twenty years, 

 and other records may have been made. — R. Heber Howe, Jr., Thoreau 

 Museum of Natural History, Concord, Mass. 



A Short-billed Marsh Wren Colony in Central New Hampshire.— 



On July 17, 1919, I found a small colony of Cistothorus stellaris, probably 

 not numbering over six pairs, in a small and not very wet meadow in 

 Sandwich, N. H. The wrens were in full song. I saw two birds with food 

 in their bills, but was unable to learn whether the young were in or out of 

 the nest, for, although I found five nests, none was occupied, and one was 

 built in 1918. The other four were all fresh made, and green as grass could 

 make them, but were all " fake nests." 



Their nests, as a rule, were set nearer the ground than the many nests 

 of the species that I have found in Massachusetts; nor were they in hum- 

 mocks, which may be explained by the fact that in this meadow there were 

 no hummocks. Two or three of the nests were supported in part by narrow- 

 leafed cat-tails, together with the usual fine grass, instead of by fine grass 

 exclusively, as is so often the case, particularly when a hummock is chosen 

 for a site. 



Scarcely more than two miles away, in a sphagnum swamp of mixed 

 growth, where considerable spruce and less balsam grew, a Tennessee 

 Warbler sang incessantly in the dead top of a maple. 



