The Chestnut-sided Warbler 339 



of listeners with that of the Yellow Warbler. Mathews says the song 

 resembles the words : "I wish, I wish, I wish to see Miss Beecher." 



All birds that depend so much on insects for their livelihood as do the 

 Chestnut-sided Warblers are necessarily highly migratory. By the middle 

 of September nearly all of them have departed from their summer home, 

 which covers the territory of the southern Canadian Provinces from Sas- 

 katchewan eastward, and extends southward as far as 

 Ohio and New Jersey. They are also found in sum- Migration 



mer along the Alleghany Mountains in Tennessee 

 and the Carolinas. Most of the migrants go to Central America by 

 way of the Gulf of Mexico, only a comparatively small number travel- 

 ing to Florida and the Bahama Islands. 



Mr. Clinton G. Abbott, writing in Bird-Lore in 1909, told most enter- 

 tainingly of the fortunes of a pair of these Warblers and their nest, which 

 he watched one summer. After describing discovering a nest from 

 which all the eggs had been thrown but one, and in their place had been 

 deposited an egg of the Cowbird, he says : 



"It was sometime during the night of July 13-14 that the first of the 

 remaining two eggs hatched the Cowbird's of course. The Warbler's 

 hatched between twelve and twelve-thirty on the fourteenth. The nicety 

 with which matters had been so arranged that the young Cowbird would 

 have just a convenient start in life over its unfortu- 

 nate rival commanded my admiration if not my n n 



sympathy. Cowbirds must indeed be sharp nest- 

 finders to be able to discover at short notice not only the nests of certain 

 suitable kinds of birds, but even nests containing eggs at a certain stage 

 of incubation. 



"After the hatching of the eggs I spent considerable time at the nest- 

 side, and observed with interest the many pretty little incidents of a bird's 

 domestic life the constant and tender brooding of the newly hatched 

 young by both Warblers in turn; the never-ceasing search among the 

 neighboring trees and bushes for small caterpillars; the delivery of the 

 food by the male to the brooding female, who in turn would raise herself 

 and pass it to the young ; the careful cleansing of the nest ; and many other 

 intimate details of the birds' loving and happy lives. When I drew aside 

 the leaves that sheltered the nest, and allowed the sun 

 to shine upon it for purposes of photography, the ^ 



mother, realizing with that wonderful instinct com- 

 mon to all birds which nest in the shade, the fatal effect on her babies 

 of the sun's direct rays, would take her stand on the edge of the nest 

 and with outstretched wings would form of her own body a living shield 

 for the comfort and protection of her young. 



"As the young birds began to grow, the Cowbird not only maintained, 

 but rapidly increased its lead over its small nest-mate. At ever visit 

 of the parent bird with food, its capacious gullet could be seen violently 



