BIRDS OF NEW YORK 419 



the 1 2th of September. Both in eastern and western New York the fall 

 migration closes between the 28th of September and the i6th of October, 

 stragglers sometimes being noticed as late as the first week in November. 

 Its abundance in the coastal district may be inferred from the fact that 

 356 individuals of this species were found in a single count at the foot 

 of Fire Island light, killed by striking on the night of September 23, 

 1887. 



Haunts and habits. During the migrations, the Black-poll frequents 

 the higher portions of our deciduous trees. The thin, wiry song is fre- 

 quently heard about the village streets and throughout our groves and 

 parks. It is not so easily observed as our other migrating warblers, due 

 to the fact that it arrives late in the season when the leaves have partially, 

 or sometimes entirely, completed their growth, and it is a neck-breaking 

 occupation to hunt down these high-feeding warblers with an opera glass. 

 However, when they are found feeding among the groves of oaks and 

 chestnuts we may have greater success for their leaves are not so fully 

 grown at the third week in May when the Black-poll's floodtide of migration 

 occurs. In my experience, the Black-poll is least frequently of all our 

 warblers seen feeding among the lower shrubbery, in the migration season, 

 but it does descend, especially on cool and rainy days and, as with all 

 warblers, we can gain a partial victory by mounting a hilltop and looking 

 downwards into the foliage of the lower hill slopes. Gerald Thayer writes : 

 " Its song is a string of from 6 to 12 or more short and equally divided 

 sibilant notes, cobweb-thin and glassy clear, uttered rather fast; the whole 

 song smoothly swelling in volume to the middle, and then smoothly falling 

 off. This should, perhaps, be called the one main song, but the variations 

 from it are many and pronounced. Its syllables vary in number from, 

 4 to 15 or more. They are sometimes uttered very hurriedly and close 

 together a song like a trembling wire and sometimes they are deliber- 

 ately and distinctly enunciated. Occasionally these 2 styles of delivery 

 are combined in one utterance. Again, the song's characteristic swell 

 and fall in volume is sometimes, though seldom, wholly wanting; and the 



