280 BIRDS OF NORTH CAROLINA 



So far, the only authority on which this bird can be included in our list is Cairns, 

 who stated that the species was a rare transient in Buncombe County (see Smith- 

 wick's Catalogue of Birds of North Carolina, page 217). 



"Wilson, the discoverer of this species, found only the three specimens, taken near Nashville, 

 Tennessee, on which his description was based; and in the early part of the last century it was 

 considered a rare bird. Brewster, quoting Samuel Cabot, says that soon after 1836 'a few birds 

 began to appear every season. They increased in numbers, gradually but steadily, until they 

 had become so common that in 1842 he obtained ten specimens in the course of a single morning.' 



"Recounting his own experience in the Cambridge region, Brewster adds: 'In 1868, and for 

 some fifteen years later, I found Nashville Warblers breeding rather numerously in Waltham, 

 Lexington, Arlington, and Belmont, usually in dry and somewhat barren tracts sparsely covered 

 with gray birches, oaks, or red cedars, or with scattered pitch-pines. A few birds continued to 

 occupy certain of these stations, but in all of the towns just mentioned the Nashville Warbler is 

 less common and decidedly less generally distributed in summer now than it was twenty-five 

 or thirty years ago.' 



"Gerald Thayer writes: 'Birch Warbler' would be a good name for this bird, as it appears in 

 the Monadnock region, where it breeds abundantly. For here it is nowhere so common as in 

 abandoned fields and mountain pastures half smothered by small gray birches. From the airy 

 upper story of these low and often dense birch copses the Nashvilles sing; and among the club- 

 mosses and ferns, and the hardhacks and other srcubby bushes at their bases and around their 

 borders the Nashvilles build their nests. But such is merely their most characteristic home. 

 They are so common and widespread that it is hard to get out of earshot of their song during the 

 breeding season. Dark spruce woods they do not favor, nor big, mixed virgin timber; but even 

 in these places one is likely to find them wherever there is a little 'oasis' of sunlight and smaller 

 deciduous growth. They are fairly common among the scanty spruces, mountain ashes, and 

 white birches of the rocky upper ridge of Mount Monadnock, almost to the top 3,169 feet. 



" 'The Nashville's proper domain or "beat," during the breeding season, lies between the 

 ground and the tops of the lower trees mainly deciduous trees. He is a little, active, foliage- 

 colored Warbler, unshowily yellow-breasted, inconspicuously gray-headed (except for a yellow 

 throat, and a rufous crown-spot which scarcely shows at all), with a dim white eye-ring, but 

 without white tail-spots, wing-bars, or any other bold markings. In demeanor it is one of the 

 most nervously agile and restless of the gleaning warblers.' (THAYER, MSS.)." (Chapman's 

 Warblers of North America.) 



280. Vermivora celata celata (Say}. ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER. 



Description. Olive-green, never ashy on head; crown-patch orange brown, more or less con- 

 cealed; underparts greenish yellow. L., 5.00; W., 2.55; T., 1.95. 



Range. Northern North America, casually on the Atlantic coast during the migrations. 

 Winters in the South Atlantic and Gulf States and southward. 



Range in North Carolina. Only known as an occasional fall migrant and winter visitor in 

 Buncombe and Currituck counties. 



FIG. 226. ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER. 



Taken by Cairns on October 18, 1893 (male), and on January 15, 1894 (female). 

 Both of these records were furnished us by Brewster, in whose collection the speci- 

 mens are now preserved. One was collected by Ludlow Griscom at Pamunkey 



