228 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Upper parts nearly uniform black, with a whitish scapular stripe and a large 

 white patch in the' middle of the wing coverts; an oblong patch in the middle of 

 the crown, and the entire side of the head and neck (including a superciliary stripe 

 from the nostrils), the chin, throat, and forepart of the breast, bright orange-red; 

 a black stripe from the commissure passing over the lower half of the eye, and 

 including the ear coverts, with, however, an orange crescent in it, just below 

 the eye, the extreme lid being black ; rest of under parts white, strongly tinged 

 with yellowish-orange on the breast and belly, and streaked with black on the sides; 

 outer three tail feathers white, the shafts and tips dark-brown, the fourth and fifth 

 spotted much with white, the other tail feathers and quills almost black. Female 

 similar; the colors duller; the feathers of the upper parts with olivaceous edges. 



Length, five and fifty one-hundredths inches; wing, two and eighty-three one- 

 hundredths inches; tail, two and twenty-five one-hundredths inches. 



This, the most beautiful of all our Warblers, is a rare 

 summer inhabitant of all New England. Dr. Brewer found 

 it breeding in the eastern part of Massachusetts. Verrill 

 says it breeds in Maine ; Dr. Thompson says it breeds in 

 Vermont; and I have seen it in New Hampshire in the 

 season of incubation. It is a shy and mistrustful species, 

 and is found only in the deepest woods, where it keeps in 

 the thickest foliage of tall trees. Its nest and eggs I have 

 not seen, and I am obliged to give the description by 

 Audubon : " It [the nest] is composed externally of dif- 

 ferent textures, and lined with silky fibres and thin delicate 

 strips of fine bark, over which lay a thick bed of feathers 

 and horsehair. The eggs are small, very conical towards 

 the smaller end, pure-white, with a few spots of light-red 

 towards the larger end. It was found in a small fork of a 

 tree, five or six feet from the ground, near a brook." 



DENDROICA CASTANEA. Baird. 

 The Bay-breasted Warbler. 



Sylvia castanea, Wilson. Am. Orn., II. (1810) 97. Nutt. Man., I. (1832) 382. 

 Aud. Orn. Biog., I. 358. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Male. Crown dark reddish-chestnut ; forehead and cheeks, including a space 

 above the eye, black ; a patch of buff-yellow behind the cheeks ; rest of upper parts 

 bluish-gray, streaked with black; the edges of the interscapulars tinged with 

 yellowish, of the scapulars with olivaceous; primaries and tail feathers edged ex- 



