WILSON'S WARBLER. 1 69 



arrival of the little cheerful songsters in the wilds of Oregon 

 about the first week of May, where these birds commonly take 

 up their summer residence, and seem almost the counterpart of 

 our brilliant and cheerful Yellow Birds {Sy/via cEstiva), tuning 

 their lay to the same brief and lively ditty, hke 'tsh 'tsJi 'tsh 

 tshea, or something similar ; their call, however, is more brief 

 and less loud. They were rather familiar and unsuspicious, kept 

 in bushes more than trees, particularly in the thickets which 

 bordered the Columbia, busily engaged collecting their insect 

 fare, and only varying their employment by an occasional and 

 earnest warble. By the 1 2th of May they were already feed- 

 ing their full-fledged young, though I also found a nest on the 

 1 6th of the same month, containing 4 eggs, and just commen- 

 cing incubation. The nest was in the branch of a small service 

 bush, laid very adroitly as to concealment upon an accidental 

 mass of old moss {Usiiea) that had fallen from a tree above. 

 It was made chiefly of ground moss {^Hypnuvi), with a thick 

 lining of dry, wiry, slender grass. The female, when ap- 

 proached, went ofl" slyly, running along the ground like a 

 mouse. The eggs are very similar to those of the summer 

 Yellow Bird, sprinkled with spots of pale olive brown, inclined 

 to be disposed in a ring at the greater end, as observed by Mr. 

 Audubon in a nest which he found in Labrador made in a 

 dwarf fir, also made of moss and slender fir-twigs. 



Wilson's Black Cap is a regular, though not common, summer 

 resident of northern New England, breeding chiefly north of the 

 United States. It is not uncommon in the Maritime Provinces, 

 and fairly common as a migrant about Montreal, but is rarely seen 

 in Ontario, though abundant in Ohio. 



