MOURNING WARBLER 



247 



The Bird and its Haunts. Both while nesting and when migrat- 

 ing, the Mourning Warbler appears to be a more or less rare bird 

 throughout its range. At Englewood, I know it only as an occasional 

 late spring migrant and have no record of it in the fall. 



At Cambridge, according to Brewster 5 , there are definite records 

 of the occurrence of but fifteen individuals of this species of which only 

 two were observed in the fall. Most of the birds, Brewster states, 

 "were found either in swampy thickets or among dense shrubbery in 

 gardens." 



At Monadnock, Gerald Thayer (MS.) writes, the Mourning War- 

 bler is rare, "we have seen several here in the spring and one or two 

 in autumn. It may possibly breed here. Its call-notes I have never 

 heard, wittingly, and its full-voiced, highly-modulated singing I have 

 heard too seldom to warrant my attempting a detailed description of it. 

 In migration, it is a somewhat shy and quick-moving Warbler, like a 

 Yellow-throat with a dash of Water-Thrush blood. It hops about in 

 thickets like a Yellow-throat, but is prone to visit also the overgrowth 

 of deciduous woods and hedge-rows. The first one I ever saw I shot 

 from the top of a seventy-foot maple, whither it had flown from a blos- 

 soming apple tree. The Mourning has also manners in common with 

 its close cousin the Connecticut, notably the habit of stopping very short 

 and sitting quite still for a few seconds." 



In Maine, Swain 4 writes, the Mourning Warbler's nesting haunts 

 are in "dense underbrush on the margin of some lowland woods or 

 second growth swamps or on some hillside covered with brush, near a 

 deep wooded ravine." 



At Branchport, N. Y., Burtch (MS.) says a favorite nesting 

 resort is a bushy clearing with an abundance of blackberry briars, and I 

 have found the bird, in June, in a similar location in northern Cayuga 

 County, N. Y. 



Song. "The males would sit for a long time on the limb of a dead 

 tree, motionless, but for the occasional utterance of their brief song. 

 In quality their song is much like that of the Maryland Yellow-throat ; 

 but the song, as I heard it, consists of five notes, the first three just 

 alike, followed by two others, louder and fuller. The whole is loud, 

 clear and ringing and forms an interesting song. * * * " (Roberts 1 } 



"In quality and style this Warbler's songs bears a strong resem- 

 blance to that of the Water-Thrush, the variations having the same gen- 

 eral quality, but the song is considerably less in volume and lacks the 

 wild thrill of the Water-Thrush. The song which I have heard most 

 frequently is tee te-o te-o te-o we-se, the last couplet accented and much 



