BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER. 23 1 



lively searching for small caterpillars and winged insects amidst 

 the white blossoms of the shady apple-tree ; and so inoffensive 

 and unsuspicious is the little warbler that he pursues without 

 alarm his busy occupation, as the spectator within a few feet of 

 him watches at the foot of the tree. Early in October these 

 birds are seen in small numbers roving restlessly through the 

 forest, preparatory to their departure for the South. 



Though the greater part of the species probably proceed 

 farther north to rear their young, a few spend the summer in 

 the Middle and Northern States ; but from their timorous and 

 retiring habits it is not easy to trace out their retreats at the 

 period of breeding. In the summer of 1830, however, on the 

 8th of June, I was so fortunate as to find a nest of this species 

 in a perfectly solitary situation on the Blue Hills of Milton. 

 The female was now sitting, and about to hatch. The nest was 

 in a low, thick, and stunted Virginia juniper. When I ap- 

 proached near to the nest the female stood motionless on its 

 edge and peeped down in such a manner that I imagined her 

 to be a young bird. She then darted directly to the earth and 

 ran ; but when, deceived, I sought her on the ground, she had 

 very expertly disappeared, and I now found the nest to con- 

 tain 4 roundish eggs, white, inclining to flesh-color, variegated, 

 more particularly at the great end, with pale, purplish points 

 of various sizes, interspersed with other large spots of brown 

 and blackish. The nest was formed of circularly entwined 

 fine strips of the inner bark of the juniper and the tough white 

 fibrous bark of some other plant, then bedded with soft feath- 

 ers of the Robin, and lined with a few horse-hairs and some 

 slender tops of bent-grass {Agrostis). The male was singing 

 his simple chant at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the 

 nest, and was now nearly in the same dark wood of tall oaks 

 and white pines in which I had first heard him a fortnight be- 

 fore. This simple, rather drawling, and somewhat plaintive 

 song, uttered at short intervals, resembled the syllables 7^ de 

 teritsca, sometimes te derisra, pronounced pretty loud and 

 slow, and the tones proceeded from high to low. In the inter- 

 vals he was perpetually busied in catching small cynips and 



