VoL XXVIj Wright, Nesting of the Blue-winged Warbler. 345 



were presumably laid, May 26 to 29. Incubation probably began 

 on May 29. Eleven days later, June 9, there were three birdlings 

 and the fourth egg was hatching. Period of incubation was ten 

 or eleven days. Six days later the nestlings were well grown. 

 Three days later, June 18, the nest was empty and the birdlings 

 were upon boughs of near trees fed by one of the parent birds. The 

 nestlings left the nest on the eighth or ninth day. 



This nesting was a week later than that given account of by Mr. 

 B. S. Bowdish at Demarest, New Jersey, in 1905 [Auk, Jan., 1906, 

 p. 16]. On May 12 Mr. Bowdish found the female "with a dead 

 oak leaf in her bill." On the 15th he found the nest "built under a 

 dead branch, near the base of a small cedar, and entirely covered 

 with dead oak leaves, so laid as to leave only a mouse-like entrance. 

 At this time no eggs had been laid, the nest seeming to be just 

 finished. The first egg was laid on the 19th, and one egg added 

 each day, the fifth and last egg being deposited May 23. The eggs 

 hatched June 2, the tenth day after deposition." On the other 

 hand this nesting was four days earlier than that which Mr. Burns 

 gives in detail as watched by him at Berwyn, Pennsylvania, in 

 which instance five young were just hatched on June 13 at 6.30 P. M. 

 and the nest was vacated on June 21 at 6.12 P. M., eight days after 

 incubation was completed. 



The Sudbury birds would seem, therefore, to have lost no time in 

 choosing a nesting-spot and carrying forward their happy plan for a 

 family. This promptness of action, if it should not be termed 

 earliness of procedure, suggests the thought that perhaps the ground 

 was not entirely strange to them. This idea is somewhat strength- 

 ened by the record of the Blue-winged Warbler seen at Framing- 

 ham on May 13, 1896. The latter town and Sudbury adjoin. 



Although the Sudbury male Blue-winged Warbler is the only one 

 of the species which I have spent time with and seen again and 

 again upon three successive visits, yet on May 10, 1905, at Belmont, 

 I had a momentary very clear view of a warbler of this species. I 

 wrote down a description of its plumage on the spot, and I have had 

 no reason to doubt the identification in the subsequent years. But 

 as I could not announce the bird as a Bluewing with absolute cer- 

 tainty, I have not made the record public until now. The Belmont 

 bird was lost to view after I had had a moment's distinct sight of 

 it, and I could not find it again on that day neither on the next day. 



