196 VIRGINIA 



several yellow-throated vireos, also silent, 

 myrtle birds, one or two Blackburnians, one 

 or two chestnut-sides, two or three redstarts, 

 and one oven-bird, with black-and-white 

 creepers, and something like a flock (a rare 

 sight for me) of white-breasted nuthatches, 

 — a typical body of migrants, to which may 

 be added, though less clearly members of 

 the same party, tufted titmice, Carolina 

 chickadees, white-throated sparrows, Caro- 

 lina doves, flickers, downy woodpeckers, and 

 brown thrashers. 



It is a curious circumstance, universally 

 observed, that warblers, with a few partial 

 exceptions, — blackpolls and myrtle birds 

 especially, — travel thus in mixed compa- 

 nies ; so that a flock of twenty birds may be 

 found to contain representatives of six, eight, 

 or ten species. Whatever its explanation, 

 the habit is one to be thankful for from the 

 field student's point of view. The pleasur- 

 able excitement which the semi-annual war- 

 bler movement affords him is at least several 

 times greater than it could be if each species 

 made the journey by itself. Every observer 

 must have realized, for example, how com- 

 paratively uninteresting the blackpoll migra- 



