Vol. xivn ,„ -, ^ „ 



1S97 J WiDMANN, Home of Bachmaiis Warbler. -JOQ 



To a practiced ear this is a rich harvest, and there is probably 

 no place where the rarer transients are so commonly met with and 

 so often heard to sing as here in this wild gum-boot region of 

 southeast Missouri, where the rivers have no banks, and a rise 

 of a few feet inundates thousands of square miles. Every spring 

 at least one half of the area is under water, but even the highest 

 floods, among them that of 1897, cannot submerge the entire area, 

 though it may lack only a few feet; so large is the expanse of 

 lowland, over which the water has to spread. Kolb Island with 

 its 140 acres had less than 40 acres of dry land at the time of my 

 visit, though the water had already gone down over a foot and a 

 half from its highest stage in April. 



The whole St. Francis basin is a network of sloughs, in reality 

 only arms of the St. Francis River ; they have very narrow chan- 

 nels free from treegrowth, but overgrown with wild rice {Zizania 

 viiliacea), different kinds of smartweed, mostly the large southern 

 kind, Fo/ygonum densiflorum, and the channel itself is closed up in 

 summer by a dense growth of lotus {Nelianbiitm) . This narrow, 

 treeless, channel region merges into the tupelo and taxodium belt', 

 the region of regular yearly overflow of several months' duration, 

 in some years hardly getting dry at all. 



Then comes the region of irregular overflow of shorter duration, 

 grown with sweetgum, blackgum, water and willow oaks, ashes, 

 Cottonwood, hackberry and, on the higher levels, white and cow 

 oaks, pin oak, red oak, walnuts and hickories, elms and two scores 

 of others, among them the ornamental catalpa and tulip trees and, 

 last but not least, the mulberry. From the ornithologist's stand- 

 point this latter is a valuable constituent of the sylva. Its fruit 

 begins to ripen early in May and is a great attraction for a number 

 of birds throughout the month. I am inclined to think that the 

 mulberry has something to do with the melodious moods and late 

 loitering of many northbound wanderers, especially the Alice 

 Thrushes, some of which were seen lingering into Tune. 



[Description of the nest and eggs of Bachman's War- 

 bler {HelmijUhophila bachmanii) .—Mr. Widmann having requested 

 me to describe the nest and eggs referred to in the preceding 

 article I take pleasure in doing so. 



