BIRDS OF KANSAS. 561 



arrivals in spring and often tarry late in the fall. They select 

 for their summer homes the low woodlands, bordering streams 

 and swamps; but during migration, visit alike the upland groves, 

 waste fields, orchards, gardens, etc., and in their search for food 

 are at home wherever insect life can be found; peeping into the 

 crevices of bark on logs, the bodies and lower branches of trees, 

 skipping about in the tops among the foliage, and often darting 

 here and there to catch, in the manner of the Flycatchers, the 

 passing insects. They are not naturally wild, and usually very 

 easily approached. 



Their song, often heard in the early breeding season, con- 

 sists of a few low, varied notes, uttered in too lisping and wiry 

 a tone to be called musical. 



The following is a description of a nest and eggs that I suc- 

 ceeded in finding in a dense undergrowth at Grand Manan, N. 

 B., June 19th, 1880. The nest was built not over two feet from 

 the ground, on a horizontal limb, and against the body of a small 

 spruce tree. It was quite bulky, and made from the tips of fir 

 and spruce twigs, fine rootlets, grasses and slender lichens, and 

 lined thickly with feathers. The eggs (four in number) are, in 

 dimensions (large as compared with measurements given by 

 others): .77 x. 5 5, .78x.56, .79x.56, .79x.56; white to creamy 

 buff, speckled with various shades of reddish brown and lilac 

 and a few streak-like blotches of black, chiefly about the larger 

 end, where the markings are rather confluent, forming a wreath 

 upon one of the eggs; in form, oval. 



Dendroica "blackburnise (GMEI,.). 



BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER. 

 PLATE XXXII. 



Migratory; rare. Arrive the first of May; return early in 

 September; leave during the month. 



B. 196. R. 102. C. 121. G. 47, 286. U. 662. 



HABITAT. Eastern temperate North America; accidental in 

 Greenland; west to the Great Plains, casually to Utah; breed- 

 ing from the northern United States (probably high, mountain- 

 ous regions south) northward; south in winter, through the 



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