324 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



of great value in this, one of our most interesting groups of birds, 

 and one exclusively American, as these Warblers have no near 

 representatives in the Old World. A handsome volume, giving 

 full descriptions of everything known of our warblers, with a 

 complete set of colored plates giving life-size figures of the mem- 

 bers of the family, would at this writing be a magnificent contri- 

 bution to ornithology. In such plates all the various color phases 

 of the young and subadult, for each and every species or subspe- 

 cies could be shown, as well as half-tone figures in the text (from 

 photograph) showing their nests. All the eggs could be exhibited 

 upon three or four plates in the same masterly manner in which 

 Bendire has done for other groups. 



Speaking of the nests of these birds, I discovered this spring 

 (1897) a most beautiful one of the common Yellow warbler. 

 Strange to say it was built obliquely (see Fig. 80) upon the side of 

 one of the upgrowing shoots of a honey locust. The foliage was 

 very dense, and apparently a secondary growth from an old 

 stump; it was upon the "flats" of south Washington, a semi- 

 swampy area on the north side of the Potomac, but less than a 

 quarter of a mile from the Washington Monument. The last 

 young one of the brood was just about to leave it, but was cap- 

 tured; the male parent only exhibiting any concern. Now, al- 

 though the old birds of this species are of a bright yellow all 

 over, this young, fluffy one was white beneath and a pale pearl 

 gray upon all the upper parts. In fact, not at all suggestive as 

 to the species to which it belonged. The nest is an extremely 

 neat little affair, and securely fastened to the limb or shoot. My 

 friend, Mr. Chas. R. Dodge, of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, has kindly examined the fibers of which this nest 

 is chiefly composed, and he writes me that they are doubtless 

 those of the common swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). 



Another warbler that constructs a pretty nest is the Prairie 

 warbler (Dendroica discolor), and several of these were found by 

 my son and myself during our collecting trips in the spring of 

 1897, in the neighborhood of the city of Washington, D. C. They 

 are fond of building in the low, second-growth timber, composed 

 of scrub-oak, chestnut, dogwood, and similar trees. On the 

 eighth of last June (1896) a very pretty specimen of the nest of 

 this species w r as discovered in the fork of a small oak, not more 

 than three feet above the ground. It contained four eggs, and 

 these hatched out in the course of the next few da vs. At first. 



