172 PROTHONOTARY WARBLER. 
beginning to unfold. But a period of cold rainy weather succeeded, and everything for 
a time was at a stand-still. On April 19 the first Prothonotary Warblers were seen. 
They seemed to be new arrivals, forerunners of the general migration; shy, compara- 
tively silent, and with that peculiar restraint of manner observable in the first comers 
of most migratory birds,—a restraint not so much to be wondered at, for a subtile 
chill and gloom still brooded over the budding forest. Nature seemed to hold her 
breath in expectancy, and the birds, as well as all wild creatures, are her children, and 
sympathize in all her varying moods. What lover of the woods has not observed the 
effect produced upon them by a sudden undefinable something that comes at times over 
the face of everything,—a slight imperceptible chill, perhaps, or a brief period of ‘cloudi- 
ness; where a moment before all was life, bustle, and joyous activity, there is now 
brooding depression and almost death-like silence. Oftentimes the effect is transient, and 
the former state of things soon resumes. 
“With a few warm days the change came, and Nature entered upon her gala-day. 
The tree-tops became canopies of dense foliage; from the starlit heavens at night came 
the mysterious lisping voices of numberless little feathered wanderers pushing their way 
northward amid the darkness, guided by some faculty which must ever remain hidden 
from mortals. Each succeeding morning found new-comers taking their places in the 
woodland choir, and every thicket was enlivened by glancing wings and merry bird 
voices. The spell was .broken, and among all the gay revellers none were more 
conspicuous than the beautiful Prothonotaries. Day by day their numbers rapidly 
increased, until by April 27 all had apparently arrived. We now found the Prothono- 
tary Warbler to be, in all suitable localities, one of the most abundant and charac- 
teristic species. Along the shores of the rivers and creeks generally, wherever the black 
willow! grew, a few pairs were sure to be found. Among the button-bushes? that 
fringed the margin of the peculiar long narrow ponds scattered at frequent intervals 
over the heavily timbered bottoms of the Wabash and White Rivers, they also occurred 
more or less numerously. Potoka Creek, a winding, sluggish stream, thickly fringed 
with willows, was also a favorite resort; but the grand rendezvous of the species 
seemed to be about the shores of certain secluded ponds lying’ in what is known as the 
Little Cypress Swamp. Here they congregated in astonishing numbers, and early in 
May were breeding almost in colonies. In the region above indicated two things were 
found to be essential to their presence, namely, an abundance of willows and the 
immediate proximity of water. Thickets of button-bushes did, indeed, satisfy a few 
scattered and perhaps not over particular individuals and pairs, but away from water 
they were almost never seen. So marked was this preference, that the song of the male 
heard from the woods indicated to us as surely the proximity of some river, pond, or 
flooded swamp, as did the croaking of frogs or the peep of the hylas. In rare instances, 
it is true, nests were found several hundred yards away from any water; but such 
apparent exceptions were in nearly every case explained by unmistakable indications 
that the place, or its immediate vicinity, had been flooded earlier in the season, probably 
at the time when the site was selected and the nest built. Owing to the exceeding 
variability of the waterlevel in the western rivers, it is not at all improbable that 
1 Salix nigra, 2 Cephalanthus occidentalis. 
