THE SYCAiAIORE WARBLER. 



159 



with a piercing quality like that of the Yellow \^''al"blel^ Rev. W. F. Hen- 

 ninger, 1902, gives the bird as a "rare transient * '■' * observed in 

 Scioto County only;"' while Raymond W. Smith (1891) reported it as a 

 common migrant in April in Warren Count}'. 



It is more than probable that the decrease in numbers in the case of this 

 species is due solely to the continued destruction of the sycamore trees. Here, 

 at least, is a bird rightly named, for the Warbler has cultivated this grim 

 and grizzled old man-of-the-rivers — whom all the other birds, save perhaps 

 the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and the Iving-bird, seem to shun — until its de- 

 pendence upon it is almost absolute. That the bird was formerly not un- 

 common northerly is 



abundantly attested, 

 and it may be that it 

 can still be found in 

 favored spots. Mr. 

 Jerome Trombley 

 knew it as a rare 

 summer resident 

 along the River 

 Raisin, in Monroe 

 County, Mich., and 

 in 1880 succeeded in 

 locating a nest. It 

 was placed 60 or 70 

 feet high in a syca- 

 more tree and at the 

 end of a branch, 

 some 20 feet fromj 

 the trunk. Inasmuch 

 as the tree was seven 

 feet through at the 

 base and the sup- 

 porting limb did not 

 promise to support 

 above a fifty pound 

 weight, the discov- 

 erer deemed thr 

 treasure unattain- 

 able. In 1897 the 

 same observer noted 

 onlv one bird. Un- 

 less definite steps are 



Taken near Cincinnati. Photo by the Author. 



STILL-HOUSE HOLLOW. 



