THE AUK : 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. xxvi. October, 1909. No. 4. 



A NESTING OF THE BLUE-WINGED WARBLER IN 

 MASSACHUSETTS. 



BY HORACE W. WRIGHT. 



In a trip for general bird-observation to Sudbury, Massachusetts, 

 on May 19, 1909, upon taking a different road back to the railroad 

 station in the afternoon from that which I had intended to take, I 

 came upon two warblers calling near the roadside, whose call-notes 

 attracted my notice as not so familiar that I could name the species 

 from which they came. So turning up a side road a few steps and 

 bringing my field glass upon one of the two, I perceived that it 

 was apparently a Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora pinus). The 

 second bird, which was undoubtedly the female, at once disap- 

 peared from sight, and I did not have an opportunity to view her. 

 But I was able to keep in sight the male bird in his successive 

 flights from one tree to another and in his movements through the 

 branches of a good-sized elm in which he busied himself in obtain- 

 ing food. The elm was one of several which stand immediately by 

 the State highway through Sudbury to Marlboro. As I obtained 

 full and near views of him again and again in his successive perches, 

 once at not longer range than twenty-five feet and only slightly 

 above the level of my eye, my first identification of the bird was 

 established beyond a doubt. Presently the warbler gave the locust- 

 like song for which I had been waiting, gave it a half-dozen times, 

 swe-e-e-e-e ze-e-e-e, quite as described by Mr. F. L. Burns in Chap- 

 man's 'Warblers of North America.' The movements of the bird 



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