BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 885 
the 12th of May, and remain, or rather the species remains 
represented, some twelve to fifteen days. In some respects it 
is the counterpart of the last species described, one of which 
is manifest in its habit of feeding almost exclusively in the 
tops of the trees. I might enumerate others, but Langille has 
described them so well that a quotation from his ‘‘ Birds in 
their Haunts,” pages 25 and 26, serves me quite as well. He 
says:—‘‘I have had every opportunity of observing its habits; 
and, as no writer has given it a full record, I bear it a special 
accountability. It is a bird of the woods, everywhere asso- 
ciated with the beautiful, tall forests of the northern counties 
of western New York, sometimes found in the open woods of 
pasture lands and quite partial to hardwood trees. In its 
flittering motion in search of insect prey, and in the jerking 
curves of its more prolonged flight, as also in structure, it is a 
genuine wood warbler, and keeps for the most part to what 
Thoreau calls ‘the upper story’ of its sylvan domain. Its 
song, which is frequent and can be heard some distance, -may 
be imitated by the syllables rheet, rheet, rheet, rheet, ridi, idi-e-e- 
e-ee, beginning with several soft, warbling notes and ending in 
a rather prolonged but quite musical squeak. The latter 
and more rapid part of the strain, which is given in the 
upward slide, approaches an insect quality of tone, which is 
more or less common to all blue warblers. This song is so 
common here as to be a universal characteristic of our tall 
forests. The bird is shy when startled from its nest, and has 
the sharp, chirping alarm note of the family. The nest is 
saddled on a horizontal limb of considerable size, some dis- 
tance from the tree, and some forty or fifty feet from the 
ground. Small and very neatly and compactly built, some- 
what after the style of the redstart, it consists outwardly of 
fine, dried grasses, bits of wasps’ nest, gray lichen, and more 
especially of old and weathered wood fibers, making it look 
quite gray and waspy. 
‘«The lining is of fine, dried grasses, or of fine shreds of the 
wild grapevine, thus giving the inside a rich brown appear- 
ance in contrast with the gray exterior. The eggs, four or 
five, some .60 by .47, are grayish or greenish-white, pretty 
well spotted or specked, or even blotched, especially avout the 
large end, with brown and deep lilac. They do not possess 
that delicate appearance common to the eggs of most of the 
warblers.” ? 
