i6 Bird -Lore 



female birds fed the young, and fed them incessantly and without pause, but 

 the female did more work than the male. The birds would become slightly 

 alarmed if any one sat too close to the open window, but paid no attention to 

 any one back a few feet in the rather dark room. I tried to take photographs 

 of both the adult birds, but the male was too quick, and had the habit of 

 sneaking to the nest by a covered route, so that I could not catch him. |The 

 female, however, seemed bolder, and would, on returning to the nest, or on 



MYRTLE WARBLER IN JUVENAL PLUMAGE 



leaving it, often alight on a branch near-by. I thus got a snapshot of her. 

 On July 20, I saw one of the young birds crawling around on the branch near 

 the nest, and later in the day found one of them on the ground under the 

 tree, and, placing it on a young spruce tree close at hand, took four photo- 

 graphs of it while it posed nicely for its picture. For several days, I saw a 

 young Myrtle Warbler around the house being fed by an adult male, and felt 

 confident that it was one of those from the nest I had been watching. I 

 never saw more than one of the young birds at a time after they left the nest, 

 and did not see the female feeding the young except in the nest. A few days 

 later, I climbed the tree and brought down the nest, which was about 24 feet 

 from the ground and about 4 feet from the trunk of the tree and 7 feet from 

 the window. It was a pretty little nest, with a ring of feathers, mostly chicken, 

 around the edge, which curled up over the hollow of the nest, and thus pro- 

 bably served in a way as a protection to the young birds. It was quite 

 compactly built with twigs of conifers, grass, rootlets, and a few hairs. The 

 young bird which I photographed showed plainly the peculiarities of the 

 nestling plumage of the Myrtle Warbler, having a white breast very distinctly 

 streaked with black, whitish wing-bars, and the back brown streaked with 

 black ; a very different looking bird from the handsome adult. 



