22-2 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



white, the chestnut-sided, and the pine warbler, and of 

 southern United States, the Louisiana water-thrush, the 

 Kentucky, the yellow-throated, the prothonotary, the 



DOWN WITH THE CANKER WORM 



A female mourning warbler feeding its young one of these leaf-destroying 

 caterpillars. The warblers are the tree doctors and keep the trees in good 

 health by defending the foliage against the ravages of caterpillars, aphids, etc. 



blue- winged, the cerulean, the hooded, the worm-eating 

 warblers, and the yellow-breasted chat. 



Each species is characteristic also of some particular 

 habitat; the oven-bird and water-thrushes are terrestrial, 

 the Kentucky, blue-winged, and chestnut-sided warblers, 

 and chats are birds of the undergrowth, while the black- 



burnian and yellow-throated warblers confine themselves 

 largely to the tree-tops. 



Since all the warblers are insectivorous, they are, per- 

 force, highly migratory, seeking southern climates when 

 the insect supply is exhausted in the North. Some of our 

 species go only to southern United States for the winter, 

 and the myrtle warbler, which is rather an exceptional 

 species, and perhaps the hardiest of all, winters often as 

 far north as southern New York, changing its diet to one 

 of bay berries. Sometimes it even takes suet from a feed- 

 ing station, together with the chickadees and nut-hatches. 

 The pine warbler, which nests throughout the eastern 

 United States, merely withdraws in winter to the southern 

 third of its breeding range, from North Carolina south- 

 ward. Thus it probably has the shortest migration of any 

 of the species. The palm and orange-crowned warblers 

 and a few black and white, yellow-throated, worm-eating, 

 parula, black-throated blue, prairie warblers, northern 



THE LARGEST OF THE WARBLERS 



The yellow-breasted chat is a bird of bizarre habits whose timidity makes a close 

 acquaintance impossible and photography extremely difficult. 



IMPOSED UPON 

 A nest of a redstart containing an egg of the parasitic cowbird as well as two 

 of its own. The cowbird imposes upon many of the warblers but some of them 

 have learned to build another floor over the unwelcome egg and thus prevent 

 it from hatching. 



water-thrushes, and oven-birds remain in Florida for the 

 winter, but the majority of species and individuals con- 

 tinue farther south. The actual distance traveled varies 

 a great deal. The prairie, black-throated blue, Swain- 

 son's, Bachman's, Cape May, and Kirtland's spend the 

 winter in the West Indies; the worm-eating, magnolia, 

 chestnut-sided, black-throated green, hooded, blue-winged, 

 Nashville, orange-crowned, parula, palm, and Wilson's 

 warblers, and the chat fly across the Gulf of Mexico to 

 Central America, while the black and white, prothonotary, 

 golden-winged, Tennessee, yellow, cerulean, bay-breasted, 

 blackpoll, blackburnian, Kentucky, Connecticut, mourn- 

 ing, and Canadian warblers, the redstart, oven-bird, and 

 both the water-thrushes continue into South America 

 some even to Brazil. The shortest journey which any 

 blackpoll makes is thirty-five hundred miles, while those 

 that nest in Alaska probably travel seven thousand miles 



