WOOD WARBLERS. 357 



which may be imitated by the syllables chee-to, chee-to, chee-tee-ee^ 

 uttered rapidly and ending in the falling inflection. 



658. Dendroica cserulea ( Wils.). CERULEAN WARBLER. Ad. ,& , 



Upper parts bright blue, the sides of head and back streaked with black ; 

 wings and tail edged with blue ; two white wing-bars; inner vanes of all but 

 the central tail-feathers with white patches at their tips; under parts white, 

 a bluish black band across the breast; sides streaked with bluish black. 

 Ad. 9. Upper parts bluish olive-green: wings and tail as in the <J ; under 

 parts white, generally more or less tinged with pale yellow. Im. Similar to 

 ad. 9 , but yellower. L., 4-50 ; W., 2-65 ; B. from N., -31. 



liange. Breeds in the Mississippi Valley as far north as Minnesota, and 

 eastward as far as Lockport, N. Y. (Davison) ; winters in the tropics. 



Washington, very rare T. V., two instances, May. 



Nest, of tine grasses bound with spiders' silk, lined with strips of bark 

 and tine grasses and with a few lichens attached to its outer surface, in a tree, 

 twenty-five to fifty feet from the ground. Eggs, four, creamy white, thickly 

 covered with rather heavy blotches of reddish brown, '60 x 47 (Allen, Bull. 

 Nutt. Orn. Club, iv, 1879, p. 26). 



In writing of this species as observed by him in Ritchie County, 

 West Virginia, Mr. Brewster says: 



" Decidedly the most abundant of the genus here. The first speci- 

 men taken May 5. They inhabit exclusively the tops of the highest 

 forest trees, in this respect showing an affinity with D. blackburnice. 

 In actions they most resemble D. pensylvanica, carrying the tail 

 rather high and having the same 'smart bantamlike appearance.' 

 Were it not for these prominent characteristics they would be very 

 difficult to distinguish in the tree tops from Parula [= Compsothtypis] 

 americana, the songs are so precisely alike. That of the latter bird 

 has, however, at least two regular variations : in one. beginning low 

 down, he rolls his guttural little trill quickly and evenly up the scale, 

 ending apparently only when he can get no higher ; in the other the 

 commencement of this trill is broken or divided into syllables, like zee, 

 zee, zee, ze-ee-ee-eep. This latter variation is the one used by D. ceerulea, 

 and I could detect little or no difference in the songs of dozens of in- 

 dividuals. At best it is a modest little strain and far from deserving 

 the encomium bestowed upon it by Audubon, who describes it as ' ex- 

 tremely sweet and mellow ' ; decidedly it is neither of these, and he 

 must have confounded with it some other species. In addition to the 

 song they utter the almost universal Dendroicine lisp and also the 

 characteristic tchep of D. coronata, which I had previously supposed 

 entirely peculiar to that bird." 



659. Dendroica pensylvanica (Linn.). CHESTNUT-SIDED WAR- 

 BLER. (Fig. 100.) Ad. & .Crown bright yellow, a black line behind the 

 eye ; front part of the cheeks black ; ear-coverts white ; back streaked with 



