80 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



hanged upon when given his choice of trees, the gooseberry bush. 

 Its second choice is the willow. 



I will tell you of a very clever act of the yellow warbler, leav- 

 ing it to Burroughs and to Seton whether it is an act of reason 

 or of instinct. When the parasitic cowbird lays its egg in a yellow 

 warbler's nest, the warbler builds a false bottom over it and runs 

 the side walls up so as to make a second nest above for its own 

 egg, thus refusing to make its home an asylum for cowbirds. 



It isa wonderful nest that it builds and must be seen to be 

 appreciated. It is made of the silver-colored fiber of plants, the 

 silk of caterpillars, tiny bits of wool and fern down. What a 

 warm little nest it must be! The yellow warbler raises but one 

 family a year and it must do it very carefully. 



MYRTLE WARBLER. 



It is always a pleasure to find one of the warblers, especially 

 one that is new to us. The myrtle warbler, however, is one of our 

 commonest visitants but is always of interest to a bird-lover. 

 They never reveal themselves to you at a single glance for they 

 are so very restless that there is ever something new for you, 

 though you have known them for years. 



A flock of at least a dozen of the myrtle birds spent a morn- 

 ing in one of my trees where, a few days before, the kinglets 

 made merry with the bugs. They were very familiar, probably 

 because they were finding a royal feast. 



It is too bad that some of our warblers cannot be renamed. 

 The redstart for example has a German name that means "red- 

 tail" but redstarts do not have red tails. They are either or- 

 ange or lemon. Probably they were called that for the same rea- 

 son that a grove (lucus) in Latin was named from the Latin 

 word lux, meaning light, because there is little light in a grove. 



The Blackburnian warbler, that pretty little bunch of flame, 

 was named after Blackburn, whoever he was. Very likely he was 

 the first man to kill one. 



The worm-eating warbler has a repulsive name and it means 

 little more than to speak of the seed-eating sparrow or an insect- 

 eating flycatcher. 



The myrtle warbler is said to eat the berries of the myrtle, 

 hence his name. Though a very small part of Ms diet is myrtle 



