MIGRATIONS OF THE BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER 103 



IN its winter resorts among the groves of the southernmost 

 States, this tiny creature grows restless with the first breath 

 of spring, and frets till its impatience is resolved into the 

 mysterious impulse of migration, or absorbed in the more 

 pressing duties of the mating season. Those that are inclined 

 to seek a summer home in the north pass leisurely along in 

 March and April, reaching Virginia and Maryland early in the 

 latter month, and the Middle States by the first of May. They 

 seldom proceed further than this along the Atlantic coast, the 

 Connecticut Valley being the terminus of their route. They 

 have been said to reach Nova Scotia, but this appears doubt- 

 ful, though in the interior the migration is pushed to the 

 region of the Great Lakes and borders of the British Provinces 

 west of the Mississippi to Iowa and Nebraska, but apparently 

 not to Minnesota. Those that winter in the valleys of the Rio 

 Grande and Colorado Kivers seem to be more restricted in 

 their movements, as they are not known to penetrate the mount- 

 ainous regions to the northward much if any beyond the sources 

 of these great streams. On the Pacific slopes, the limit must 

 be fixed, so far as we know now, at latitude 42. 



In the Colorado Basin, this Gnatcatcher is sparingly but 

 generally distributed in summer, and resident, as far as the 

 whole area is concerned, though partially migratory within its 

 limits, since those individuals that repair to northerly or alpine 

 districts to breed retire in the fall to the lower warmer portions. 

 At Fort Whipple, in the spring of 18G5, I did not notice their 

 presence until the last week in April ; but, as I was not then 

 collecting every day, I may have missed tkem on their first ap- 

 pearance. At Washington, D. C., where they are more numer- 

 ous than I have found them to be anywhere in the West, I 

 used to note their arrival each spring for several years in the 

 early part of April. On entering the noble oak forests which 

 still surround the city, at a time when the buds, though swollen, 

 have not yet burst into the leafy canopy which later covers 

 the nakedness of the branches and gives privacy to the life of 

 numberless sylvan sprites besides the Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, 

 I seldom missed first hearing, then seeing, these waf ward and 

 capricious little creatures. Though so near the most uncertain 

 and dangerous spot in America Washington, " Mecca of the 

 unfortunate and the tomb of ambition v , the Blue-grays seem 

 to have no fears for the success of their recent pilgrimage from 

 the South, and indulge the aspirations of the day. Not content 



