39O NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Vermivora rubricapilla rubricapilla (Wilson) 

 Nashville Warbler 



Plate 93 



Sylvia rubricapilla Wilson. Amer. Orn. 1812. 6:15 

 Vermivora rubricapilla DeKay. Zool. N. Y. 1844. pt 2, p. 86, fig. 104 

 Vermivora rubricapilla rubricapilla A. 0. U. Check List. Ed. 3. 

 1910. p. 307. No. 645 

 vermivora, Lat., worm-eating; rubricapilla, reddish-haired or reddish -crowned 



Description. Head and back of the neck gray; a chestnut patch on 

 the crown, sometimes tinged with gray; eye ring white; back, wings and tail 

 (their visible portions) olive green; breast and most of under parts yellow; 

 lower belly whitish. Female: Very similar to male but paler and the 

 chestnut crown patch smaller or wanting. Fall specimens are browner 

 or grayer than in the spring. 



Length 4.5-4.8 inches; extent 7.5; wing 2.33-2.50; tail 1.75-2; bill .36. 



Distribution. Breeds from southern Saskatchewan, central Quebec 

 and Cape Breton southward to Nebraska, northern Illinois, northern 

 New Jersey and Connecticut; winters from southern Texas and Vera 

 Cruz to Guatemala. In New York this species is a common transient 

 in nearly all portions of the State, arriving in the spring from the ist to 

 the 1 2th of May, usually by the 4th in the southern counties, and rarely 

 as early as the 28th of April. The greater number pass farther northward 

 between the 2Oth and 3Oth of the month. In the fall they return from 

 the nesting grounds from the nth to the 3Oth of August and depart for 

 the south from the 5th to the I5th of October. In the northern portions 

 of the State it is locally a common summer resident, and locally in the 

 eastern counties which lie in the Alleghanian area Highland Falls, 

 Black Dome, Cohoes. Throughout central and western New York it 

 is extremely rare as a summer resident, as far as my experience goes. I 

 never met with a breeding pair in any of the western counties of the State, 

 although other collectors have secured a few nests containing eggs; Chili, 

 E. H. Short; Onondaga county, C. H. Wilder; and South Hill, Tompkins 

 county, May 27, 1905, and June 6, 1906 (Reed and Wright, Vertebrates 

 of the Cayuga Lake Basin, Am. Phil. Soc. Proc. 48:444). 



