MAGNOLIA WARBLER. 225 
banks of the Saskatchewan, where it is as familiar as the com- 
mon Summer Yellow Bird (.S. @st/va), which it also resembles 
closely in its manners and in its breeding station, but is gifted 
with a more varied and agreeable song. It frequents the 
thickets of young spruce-trees and willows, flitting from branch 
to branch, at no great distance from the ground, actively en- 
gaged in the capture of winged insects, which now constitute 
its principal fare. 
The Magnolia is not so rare a bird as Nuttall supposed, — indeed, 
it is common everywhere between the Atlantic and the eastern 
base of the Rockies, breeding in northern New England and in 
the northern portions of New York, Ohio, and Michigan, and 
thence to Labrador and Great Slave Lake. 
In Massachusetts it is chiefly a spring and autumn visitor, though 
Mr. William Brewster found a few pairs nesting in the Berkshire 
Hills. It winters in Central America, Cuba, and the Bahamas. 
In its habits this bird combines the Creeper and the Flycatcher 
in true Warbler fashion, picking insects and larva from the cran- 
nies of the bark and from the leaves, and capturing on the wing the 
flying mites. The favorite nesting site is the border of a wood 
or an open pasture, though I have found nests in the deep forest, 
usually on the margin of an open glade. 
The song is Warbler-like in its simplicity, yet is an attractive 
melody, the tones sweet and musical. 
Nuttall’s idea that the autumn route of migration taken by more 
northern breeding birds lies somewhere to the westward of New 
England, is not consistent with more recent observation ; for while 
it is true that large numbers follow the valley of the Mississippi, — 
some of them crossing to the Atlantic when south of the Allegha- 
nies, —it has also been ascertained that immense flights of birds 
that breed in the interior go southward along the coast-line. Many 
species that are not seen in New England during the spring migra- 
tion are abundant in the autumn. 
VOL. 1, —— 15 
