BIRDS OF KANSAS. 587 



These beautiful flycatching Warblers frequent the thickets and 

 rank, weedy growths fringing the streams, the undergrowths in 

 open woods, and swampy grounds in the canebrakes and rushes. 

 They seldom visit the habitations of man, preferring the unfre- 

 quented and secluded places. They live almost wholly in the 

 bushes and lower branches of the trees, occasionally visiting the 

 upper branches, especially when the trees are budding and in 

 blossom. A lively, graceful bird, that has somewhat the habits 

 of the Redstart in spreading and closing the tail, but is less ner- 

 vous and flitty. Upon the wing, they glide swiftly and easily, 

 and are expert flycatchers in fact, subsist chiefly upon insects 

 caught in the air; failing to catch at the first dash, instead of re- 

 turning to their perch, like most of the family, they follow the 

 insect in its windings until captured. 



During the early breeding season, the males enliven the woods 

 with their familiar song. Mr. Langille, in "Our Birds in their 

 Haunts," says that the birds have two distinct songs, which he 

 thus describes: "'Cheree, cheree, cheree, chi-di-ee' the first 

 three notes with a loud, bell-like ring, and the rest in very much 

 accelerated time, and with the falling inflection." This one I 

 have often heard, the following never: "A strange, whistling 

 melody, 'Whee-ree, whee-ree-eeh,' with a marked emphasis on 

 the second syllable, and a still more marked one on the last. 

 Part of the time this utterance was somewhat varied, a few notes 

 being sometimes added, and again a few dropped." Their call, 

 or alarm note, "Tship," is clear and sharp. 



Their nests are built in low bushes, on bottom and marshy 

 lands. They are composed of leaves, strippings from plants 

 and vines, grasses, interwoven with a cotton-like substance, and 

 occasionally spider webs, and lined with fine, hair-like stems. 

 Eggs three to five (usually four), . 70x.52; white or pale yellow- 

 ish white, speckled or spotted chiefly around the larger end with 

 reddish brown and pale lilac, with occasionally blackish specks; 

 in form, oval to rounded oval. (They vary in size and in 

 amount of markings.) 



