130 THE TENNESSEE WARBLER. 



LIKE the Nashville Warbler, this bird of the far north owes its name 

 to an accident of discovery. Wilson first found it on the banks of the Cum- 

 berland in Tennessee, and promptly named it after their common hostess. 

 Both Wilson and Audubon regarded the bird as extremely rare, the former 

 having seen but two specimens and the latter three. It is known now as one 

 of our common migrants in the middle West, but its first positive recognition 

 in the case of any individual observer is usually effected by the aid of a gun. 

 Altho bright olive-green might be reckoned on first thought a conspicuous 

 color, it is precisely the opposite when viewed among the tender greens of 

 May, or amidst the changing foliage of autumn. 



The Tennessee Warbler is a rather late and leisurely migrant. It does 

 not appear in spring until the leaves are at least half way out, usually about 

 the end of the first week in May ; and at that season it keeps to the densest 

 cover in woodland or orchard trees. But once learn its song and the rest 

 is easy. Its voice can readily be distinguished in a May-day chorus, but 

 it is not averse to musical effort on dull days, and then is your best chance. 

 A dull canopy of cloud, it may be, covers the sky. It is not raining, but the 

 face of nature is bathed in an atmosphere heavy with warm moisture, and 

 the apple trees gratefully suck up the nourishment and throw out their foliage 

 and blossoms visibly before your eyes. Suddenly from the midst of some bower 

 of blossom not so far removed but glowing softly down the orchard isle of 

 tenuous vapor, there bursts a fine note of inquiry, the prelude of a series 

 which rises rapidly to a peremptoiy challenge, Pichick' , pichick' , pichick', chick, 

 chick, chip, chip, chip. The song is delivered in a rapid crescendo up to the 

 last note, but with this the bird suddenly checks himself. If you advance, 

 the bird quits ' his bower for some other flower-hold as difficult, and the 

 chances are against your catching anything but a dull yellowish glimpse. 

 You cannot see him, but you have heard and that is enough. 



In the fall, strange to say, the birds not only seem much more plentiful, 

 but they quit the woods and resort almost exclusively to wayside thickets, 

 second-growth clearings, and the like. At this season too they are much 

 more approachable. Either they are less suspicious now that the love- 

 sickness is over, or else they trust more implicitly to the protection of the 

 sere leaf. 



