12 $ty Uarbler 



flushing from the nest, under your feet, the female Yellow-Palm lamely 

 flutters away, showing plainly her characteristic white outer tail feathers. 

 Should you follow her she will lead you away, always fluttering distressed- 

 ly just in front, but if you stop at the nest she soon ceases her attempts to 

 deceive and now shyly approaches, hopping and flitting nervously about, 

 uttering sharp notes of protest and alarm. 



During the last two weeks in May Hudsonian Chickadees and Red- 

 breasted Nuthatches lay their eggs — the former in natural cavities in low 

 decayed stumps in swamp or dense thicket of spruce and fir. The Nut- 

 hatches select some dead tree stump in open woods or forest grove and at 

 some considerable elevation excavate, like the Woodpeckers, their own little 

 burrows. 



Throughout the month of June, with all the small summer birds build- 

 ing nest or incubating their eggs, the interest of the collector was at the 

 keenest. In the old bushy woodland pastures were Nashville Warblers sing- 

 ing brightly near their mates hidden away on the nest in some sheltered 

 mossy bank. 



Black-throated Green, Magnolia and Myrtle Warblers' nests were to be 

 found by careful search and watching among the spruces, firs and hemlocks 

 of the thickets and big woods. Down in the moss-grown, shady depths of 

 the ravines, among the underbrush of beech, maple, moosewood and seedling 

 conifers, were Canadian Warblers in numbers, but to find the nest — that was 

 not easy. Along the wooded shores of lakes and ponds, among the bunches 

 of " beard " moss which festoon-like, drape the dead branches and stumps, 

 nests the dainty little Parula Warblers. In the heavy mixed timber of the 

 logging woods on the hills, are Black-throated, Blue and Blackburnian 

 Warblers, almost always found together, the former hiding its neat little 

 nest away, close to the ground, in a tiny seedling fir or spruce, while the 

 latter saddles its home of twigs and grasses upon some wide spreading branch 

 of giant spruce, usually forty or fifty feet above the ground. In these same 

 heavy forests, especially where fir and hemlock abound, are found the Solitary 

 Vireos — their pensile nests, always attached among twigs at the extremity 

 of the limbs of conifers, large and small. 



By the end of the first week in July, many young birds are on the wing, 

 following or followed by their watchful parents. Other young still in the 

 nests, with ever-greedy mouths, keep their parents busy supplying their 

 wants. So now the bright songs are much less frequent. Soon after, the 

 birds, young and old, retire to secluded spots, there to change their plumage 

 and recuperate after the arduous duties of parenthood, gathering strength 

 for the long Southward journey soon to begin. In like manner the ornitho- 

 logist's interest in his rambles and studies dwindles, till again, like the 

 birds, restlessness seizes him and other lands entice. 



