FAMILY Mniotiltidee. 



Islands and Nova Scotia south to central Minnesota, 

 Michigan, central Ontario, New York, and Pennsylvania, 

 in the higher hills of Massachusetts, and also in the nmuii- 

 tains to West Virginia; it winters from Nicaragua to Ec- 

 uador. It scarcely arrives in Massachusetts in its journey 

 northward before the last day of May, but in New York 

 it is due about the tenth of that month. 



The song of the Mourning Warbler is, like that of the 

 Black-throated Green, brief but musically attractive. It 

 is another example of a high-pitched lisping whistle which 

 is difficult for me to reconcile with the syllabic forms of 

 different authors, especially as these forms themselves are 

 distinctly different, at least in rhythm. The song as I 

 know it is a full, rolling, and not perfectly clear-toned 

 whistle, ending with sharply staccato tones little if any 

 below the opening tones, and they are so high in pitch, 

 that to match them I have to resort to the lisping whistle 

 produced behind one's front teeth. It must ever be borne 

 in mind that these Warblers' songs belong at the extreme 

 upper limit of the piano keyboard, hence the great diffi- 

 culty of an unmusical ear to appreciate the musical inter- 

 vals which are involved in the songs. Here are two records 

 belonging to the Mourning Warbler both of which extend 

 a bit beyond uppermost C. 



Vivace. 



1 ^ A/NA /VVN 



J kuit. ruit. ruit, wit-it-it. -*Whit, whit, whit, wit - 



Three of the following authors quoted agree on the drop 

 of the voice at the close of the song, and that scores an 

 important fact. It is rather significant, however, that 

 one of the two records above shows a drop of only a semi- 

 tone below the initial note of the song. Merriam writes, 

 ''Its common song consists of a simple, clear, warbling 

 whistle resembling the syllables true, true, true, tru, too, the 

 voice rising on the first three syllables (meaning words not 

 syllables) and falling on the last two." Ralph Hoffman 

 306 





