258 FLORIDA YELLOW-THROAT 



Summer Range. Florida west along the coast to Louisiana and 

 doubtless northeastern Texas; north along the coast to the Dismal 

 Swamp, Virginia. 



Winter Range. South Carolina to Cuba. 



The Bird and its Haunts. In Florida this resident form of the 

 Yellow-throat is so commonly found only in scrub palmettos that it is 

 known as the 'Palmetto Bird.' I have also found it about the bushy 

 borders of 'bay-galls' surrounded by scrub palmetto, while in the Kis- 

 simmee region it lives in the lower growth (largely young palms) of 

 cabbage palms. 



In Virginia W. Palmer found this bird in cypress swamps and 

 canebrakes. In Mississippi Allison (MS.) writes that it frequents 

 "heavy thickets of blackberry, trumpet creeper, and the other wayside 

 vines of the South ; rank weeds ; hedges of Cherokee rose ; in short, 

 all thickets not shaded by woods, attract this Warbler. On the Gulf 

 coast, it is frequent in thickets of reeds in the salt marshes." 



Song. The song of this bird, as I have heard it in Florida, is 

 full and strong and while unmistakably that of a Yellow-throat, is still 

 recognizably different from that of the Yellow-throats about New York 

 City. 



"The usual note is a drawling chip, sometimes prolonged as if the 

 bird were exhausted. The song is generally uttered from a perch more 

 elevated than the low thicket in which most of the time is spent, and 

 the singer elevates the head and depresses the tail in the manner of a 

 wren ; it is variously rendered, but the most poetic and accurate version 

 is, Witchery, witchery, witchery often somewhat extended: Witcher- 

 cheree, witcher-cheree, witcher-cheree. There is considerable indi- 

 vidual variation. It is uttered all through the spring and summer ; but 

 in early spring a more elaborate song, reminding me somewhat of the 

 Hooded Warbler's, is rather frequent. The flight song begins as the 

 singer launches forth from his thicket, reaches its climax at a height of 

 fifteen or twenty feet, when the head is thrown back as when singing at 

 rest, and gradually dies away as the bird sinks down with rapidly vi- 

 brating wings ; it resembles the following : Chee, chee, chee, chee, che- 

 witchery, witchery, witchery, witchery." (Allison, MS.) 



Eggs. 4 or 5. Ground color, markings, etc., the same as in the 

 Northern Yellow-throat. Size ; an average set of 4 eggs from Florida 

 measures, Jix.tf, 7OX.53, 7ix-54, 72X.55- 



Nesting Dates. Charleston, S. C, May 9-June n (Wayne). 



BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES 

 (i) ELLIOTT COUES, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1871, 20. 



