(Hlj? KarhUr 



ii 



there is little chance of one's discovering the nest at all, no matter how 

 sharp the eyes nor persistent. The discovery of each of the two nests taken 

 that season was dne to careful and wary watching of the female bird while 

 carrying material to her nest. In one case I noted the bird tearing the lin- 

 ing from an old nest of the previous year and transporting it, bit by bit, to 

 the new one some twenty rods away through the thicket, where her move- 

 ments were most difficult to follow. These nests were in small, slender 

 spruces 15 to 25 feet high with thick bushy tops into which, close to the 

 trunk and partly pensile among the clustering twigs, the neat little homes 

 were concealed. About, the size of a baseball, and almost as round and 

 smooth, made of green ground-mosses and plant down, the nests were so 

 snugly hid away and in color so blended with the spruce twigs as to be in- 

 visible to keenest eyes from the ground. The entrance to the nest was at 

 the top, and so small and deep was the hollow that the feathers which lined 

 it curled over the opening, obscuring the eggs or young during the mother's 

 absence. Parting these protecting feathers and looking closely into the deep, 

 dark, little cavity one might see nine or ten tiny white eggs piled two tiers 

 deep at the bottom. 



The Yellow- Palm is a really common Warbler in this and similar dis- 

 tricts of Nova Scotia, where it breeds abundantly. The song of this bird is 

 a wheezy warble which, coming from some low perch in the bushy bogs and 

 barrens that they frequent, is a most characteristic bird note during the 

 bright spring days. 



The first nest of this bird was discovered on May 20th, and contained 5 

 eggs. During the next ten days many more were found, some with five, 

 more with four eggs. Later still, in June, nests were noted containing 

 young in various stages of development. On June 25th, a nest with four 

 fresh eggs was noted, and on July 6th, one in process of building, though 

 this one when completed was not further used. Some dissimilarity of location 

 of nesting-site was displayed by these birds. Thus the most frequent site 

 was on the dry " barrens " — (though never far from water or wet bog) — 

 where the nest would be attached to the dried stalks of a cluster of last year's 

 brakes, whose now fallen tops formed a sheltering canopy overhead — below 

 the nest rested lightly on the ground. Sometimes a mossy tussock in a bog 

 or swamp would be selected, into the side of which, under overhanging 

 grasses, the nest would be hidden away. Again, nests were found at the 

 bases of small spruces or fir bushes in open woodlands, sunk into the moss 

 and concealed by low-lying, thick branches. During this past spring of 1910 

 — a wet -one in Nova Scotia — I found one nest of the Yellow-Palm among 

 the branches of a little spruce bush three feet above the wet ground. The 

 nests were all rather loose and bulky, composed outwardly of twigs and 

 grasses and lined with fine grasses or hair and always with feathers. Upon 



