BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 275 



with rootlets, fine grass, some feathers, and horse-hair. It 

 was rather loose, open, and bulky, and contained four 

 young, partly fledged. Failing to find the eggs for myself, 

 I resort for description to a set from Reading, Massachu- 

 setts, in Professor Ward's collection at Rochester, N. Y. 

 They are four in number, about .70 x .49, creamy-white, 

 having a well-defined and beautiful wreath of spots and 

 small blotches of red, brown and lilac, intermixed with a 

 few specks of black. 



Wintering in Cuba, Mexico and Central America, Den- 

 drceca virens ranges through Eastern North America, breed- 

 ing from New York and Southern New England northward 

 to Newfoundland. It enters its breeding habitat by the 

 first week of May, and leaves in October. It has been found 

 in Greenland and in Europe as a straggler. 



THE BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 



In this thick grove of cedars I am almost constantly within 

 sight or sound of the Black-and-white Creeping Warbler 

 (Mniotilta varia). About five inches long, spotted and 

 streaked all over, except a white space underneath, with 

 jet-black and chalk-white, this bird is very conspicuous as 

 it moves in a hopping, jerking manner and in a spiral 

 direction, very much in the style of the Brown Creeper, 

 along the trunks and larger limbs of trees. Like the latter, 

 too, it has the habit of descending to the lower part of the 

 trunk of a neighboring tree, when getting pretty well up; 

 but its sharply defined markings, especially the broad white 

 line over the head and back of the neck, cause it to be seen 

 much more readily than its little brown neighbor, which is 

 so similar in color and markings to the bark which it climbs 

 with such ease and gracefulness. But while his movements 

 are those of a Creeper, the structure of Mniotilta is that of a 



