WOOD WARBLERS. 



357 



rdiniirily 



rikingly 



ving the 



s. Seen 



banded 



which may be imitated l)y the sylhibles rhcc-to, chee-to, chec-tee-ee, 

 uttered rapidly and ending in the falling inflection. 



668. Dendroica canilea ( ifih.), C'eki-lean WAi<iti.Ki{. A<1. s. 

 — UpptT parts briglit blue, the Hidus of head and back streaked with bhiek; 

 win;;s anil tail edged witli blue; two whit*- win;r-biirs; inii.r vime« ol' nil but 

 the central tuil-li'utliers with white {latchert at their tips; uiuler parts white, 

 a bluish black band across the breast; sides streaked with bluish black. 

 All. 9. — Ujiper parts bhiisli olive-green; wings and tail as in the S; uruler 

 parts wliite, generally more or less tinged with pale yellow. //«.— Similar to 

 ad. 9 , but yellower. L., 4'r)0; \\ ., 2m!,'); B. from N., •;{!. 



liaiKje. — Breeds in the Mississippi Valley as tar north as Minnesota, and 

 eastward as far as Loekport, X. Y. [ Davison i ; winters in the tro|)ies. 



Wasliington, very rare T. V., two instances. May. 



JV'e»<, of line grasses bound with spiders' 8ilk, lined with strips of bark 

 and Hue grasses and with a few lichens attached to its outer surface, in a tree, 

 twenty-tive to fifty feet from the ground. /;V/f/.f, fnur, creamy white, tbickly 

 covered with rather heavy blotches of reddish brown, (10 x 47 (Allen, Bull. 

 Nutt. Orn. Club, iv, 1879, p. 2t!). 



In writing of thi.s species a.s observed by him in Ritchie Coindy, 

 West Virginia, Mr. Brewster says: 



"Decidedly the most abundant of the genus heve. The first speci- 

 men taken May 5. They inhabit exclusively the tops of the highest 

 forest trees, in this respect showing an affinity with D. bhtckhiirniir. 

 In actions they most resemble J). peiiKylvatnca, carrying the tail 

 rather high and having the same 'smart banlamiike appearance.' 

 Were it not for these prominent cliaractcristics they would be very 

 difTicult to distinguish in the tree tops from Pnniln [■= Compmthh/jiix] 

 nmericana, the songs are so precisely alike. That pf the latter bird 

 has, however, at least two regular variations: in one. beginning low 

 down, he rolls his guttural little trill quickly and evenly up the scale, 

 ending apparently only when he can get no higher: in the other the 

 commencement of this trill is broken or divided into syllables, like zpc, 

 zee, zee, ze-ee-ee-ecp. This latter variation is the one tised by J), cwnilen, 

 and I could detect little or no difference in the songs of dozens of in- 

 dividuals. At best it is a modest little strain and far from deserving 

 the encomium bestowed upon it by Audubon, who describes it as 'ex- 

 tremely sweet and mellow'; decidedly it is neither of those, and he 

 must have confounded with it some other species. In addition to the 

 song they utter the almost universal Dendroicine lisp and also the 

 characteristic tchep of D. roroiKifn. which I had previously supposed 

 entirely peculiar to that bird." 



659. Dendroica peusylv^iica (Lhm.). ruE^iTN-rT-sinEi) War- 

 bler. (Fig. 100.) All. 6. — Crown bright yellow, a black line behind tlie 

 eye; front part of the cheeks black; car-coverta white; back streaked with 



