BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 379 
tle from the pastures. The walls are exceedingly thick, being 
bound firmly together with fine roots, dry grass, into which are 
woven the catkins of different willow kinds of timber, and is 
delicately lined with down of various kinds of vegetation. The 
location may be in the garden, field, swamp, lawn, forest, or 
orcnard. 
The eggs are greenish white, heavily spotted with brown 
and lilac that occasionally spreads into splotches. The young 
are often out of the nest by the twenty-fifth of June. I have 
not yet decided that they do not rear the second brood occas- 
ionally. They are common victims of the Cowbird’s audacious 
occupation of their nests with its own larger eggs, over which 
the Yellow Warbler will sometimes build another, and second 
story nest. 
The distribution of this species in the State, is almost univer- 
sal, except on the marshes and open prairies. Mr. Grant does 
not list them for the three counties in which his observations 
were made, but directly west of them in Cass, Becker and Clay 
counties they are registered as common. A few only remain 
later than early September, but isolated instances have occur- 
red when they have lingered into October. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Bill, lead color; head, all around and under parts generally, 
bright yellow; rest of upper parts yellow olivaceous, brightest 
on the rump; back, with obsolete streaks of dusky reddish 
brown; fore breast and sides of body streaked with brownish 
red; tail feathers bright yellow; outer webs and tips, with the 
whole upper surfaces of the innermost one, brown; extreme 
outer edges of wing and tail feathers olivaceous like the back; 
the middle and greater coverts and tertials, edged witn yellow, 
forming two bands on the wings. 
Length, 5.25; wing, 2.65; tail, 2.25, 
Habitat, North America at large. 
DENDROICA CERULESCENS (GMELIN.) (654.) 
BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER. 
On the 10th, 11th, or 12th of May, there comes a sort of 
Wood-warbler wave, like an unseen tide setting in from the 
sun, and not the invisible moon. It seems as if every branch 
of lofty tree or brush, or shrub, was tremulous with flittings of 
song-bird life half suppressed, half revealed, moving leisurely 
toward the waiting northland. One catches a glimpse of some 
ravishing form of varied colors to be instantly changed for an- 
