146 SYLVICOLID^E : AMERICAN WARBLERS. 



as nearly as possible the same as that of the Black- 

 and-yellow Warbler, excepting that the latter is com- 

 mon, while the Cape May is rare enough to be justly 

 regarded by the collector as a prize wherever taken, 

 unless it be in the rather restricted areas where num- 

 bers pass the summer. I am inclined to doubt that 

 the Cape May has ever been known to breed in 

 Massachusetts, or thence southward in New England ; 

 a record to such effect, given by Minot, being perhaps 

 open to the suspicion that a nest and eggs of D. astiva 

 had been unwittingly taken for those of the rarer spe- 

 cies. It enters New England with the Magnolias, and 

 its periods of migration are the same ; some years, and 

 in some localities, it is more frequently observed than 

 at other times and places. In the spring of 1872 I took 

 a female at Amherst, and saw another. Mr. Sidney 

 Dickinson secured a male and observed another indi- 

 vidual the same year. In 1873 I shot a full-plumaged 

 male, and heard of others that were taken all upon 

 apple-trees in orchards excepting one, which was 

 secured in a small oak grove. These occurrences 

 were between the loth and I5th of May. Mr. Allen 

 has obtained it at Springfield. According to Mr. Mer- 

 riam, a few are taken in Connecticut each season, and 

 it was not an uncommon bird about Suffield in 1876. 

 It is said by Mr. Maynard to be common at Umbagog, 

 in thick evergreen woods, where it keeps in the tops 

 of the trees r and doubtless nests high up in the im- 

 mense spruces and hemlocks of that vicinity ; for 

 females taken the second week in June bore marks of 

 incubation. A nest found by Mr. H. B. Bailey on the 

 Richardson Lakes, in northwestern Maine, was how- 

 ever in a low spruce, less than five feet from the 



