°i8ni; 1 WiDMANN, Stuainson's Warbler in Missouri. IIS 



A Kentucky Warbler had the triangular black patch from 

 behind the eye down the sides of the neck continued in a half- 

 circle so as to almost meet its fellow on the breast. 



A Canada Flycatching Warbler wore a real substantial black 

 collar, not merely the series of spots they usually have on the 

 breast. 



At one time I heard a great commotion among birds a little 

 way ofif and on investigation I noticed a snake {Coluber lind- 

 heimeri) go up the trunk of a chestnut oak. The bark of this tree 

 is pretty scaly and the snake could not so easily find a hold ; she 

 had to try to the right and to the left to find a point which would 

 support her, but nevertheless she managed to go up at the rate of 

 one foot a minute. A Downy Woodpecker, a Flicker, and a pair 

 of Summer Tanagers were greatly agitated by her presence ; and 

 she was now twenty feet up the tree, when suddenly the angry 

 killikatiik of the Sparrow Hawk came nearer and nearer, and 

 turning around 1 saw an old Redshoulder, chased by a male 

 Sparrow Hawk, come down the slough at a lively rate. The Red- 

 shoulder, not seeing me, alighted within twenty yards, but the 

 Sparrow Hawk passed by and disappeared. Turning to my 

 snakeship, she also had disappeared and could not be seen again, 

 high or low. It was now four o'clock and I was just going to 

 give up waiting for the return of the Ivorybill phantom, when all 

 at once a novel song came from a papaw thicket about a hundred 

 yards up the slough. Its novelty struck me at once with the 

 hope, nay, with the certainty, that it meant a prize. It opened 

 a la Seiurus motacilla and ended k la S. noveboracensis. It was no 

 Oporornis, no Geothlypis, no this, no that — in short, it could be 

 nothing else but Helinaia, though the surroundings did not 

 exactly fit the canebrake dweller of the sunny South. Hdinaia 

 here in this dark, deep wood, where the cypress and the sweet 

 gum join their lofty branches, where under a canopy of hornbeam, 

 ash and dogwood, and a thick undergrowth of papaw, hazel, 

 spicebush {Lindera) and Hercules club (Ara/ia spinosd) inter- 

 woven with bamboo vine {Sniilax) and muscadine, the ground is 

 covered with a veil of perpetual gloom. 



It took me considerable time to locate and to get a good look 

 at the originator of the strange song, but at last I found him. 



