Relation of Summer Birds to Western Adirondack Forest 447 



flight-songs it can drop down into a safe covert. The Yellow-throat's 

 first choice is a regular cat-tail swamp in whose shrubby border it 

 can find a convenient cluster of iris in which to hide its nest and red- 

 spotted eggs. 



Mourning Warbler. Oporornis Philadelphia (Wils.) 



Length 5.4. Head bluish slate-color; back and tail olive-green ; throat 

 blackish ; breast black ; lower part yellow ; no white anywhere. 



The Mourning Warbler is an inhabitant of the shrubbery of clear- 

 ings usually dry. It likes a partly cleared knoll, where there are 

 logs and stumps overhung by scattered clumps of bushes and sap- 

 lings. There it sings low in the shrubbery, skulking just out of 

 sight and uttering intermittently its loud, clear notes. The Mourn- 

 ing Warbler seems to live in a zone between the ground and the 

 lower portions of the bush foliage, utilizing a plane of the clear- 

 ing unappropriated by any other warbler. Toward evening the 

 male will begin to make the round of the small area it frequents, 

 singing as he halts here and there to pick up a bit of food, and slip- 

 ping noiselessly and shyly from one station to another. Its nest is 

 made on or near the ground and its eggs are spotted with reddish 

 brown. 



Water-Thrush. Seiurus noveboracensis noveboracensis (Gmel.) 



Length 6. Upper parts dark brown, a buffy line over the eye; under 

 surface buff, profusely spotted with black. 



The Water-Thrush dwells near quiet pools or brooks where alders 

 clog the shallow levels of the stream and where bushes fringe the 

 margins. Here is heard its loud song, a series of twits-s in rising 

 emphasis, and a series of twees in falling, a curve or arc of music 

 rising with gradual elevation and then curving abruptly downward 

 like a rocket shot outward at a low angle. The bird itself is not 

 often seen, though it is inquisitive and frequently comes into view 

 when its curiosity is aroused by the anxious chirping of another 

 bird disturbed by the observer. Once this summer, when a Song 

 Sparrow was chirping nervously at my presence near a land- 

 locked pool of the brook, a Water-Thrush came out from its retreat 

 under the overhanging shrubbery and perched in the base of the sap- 

 ling clump where the sparrow was voicing its anxiety for the safety of 

 its young hiding in the thicket. The Water-Thrush teetered on its 

 perch and peered about the spot as if to determine the cause of the 

 disturbance, almost within arm's length of me. On another occasion 

 this summer, near the same quiet little pool, while I was 

 hunting for the nest of a pair of White-throated Sparrows, which 

 were loudly chirping around and overhead in the saplings, four pairs 

 of warblers came and hopped about with the Sparrows, — Water- 

 Thrushes, Myrtle Warblers and Magnolia Warblers, — all interested 

 in the disturbance, apparently unafraid of the real cause of the con- 

 fusion, and each uttering its characteristic chirps and calls. The 

 Water-Thrush places its nest in some nook of an overhanging 

 bank near the water, and lays white eggs, delicately speckled. 



