178 SWAINSON’S WARBLER. 
with cadmium-orange, occasionally tinged or washed with olive-green, but often pure yellow. ’ Bill, 
uniform deep black; iris, brown; legs and feet, dark plumbeous. Adult female: Similar to the duller 
colored male (in winter), but yellow appreciably less pure, the pileum always olive-greenish, and gray 
of wings, &c., less bluish. 
“Total length, about 5.40; wing, 2.90; tail, 2.25 inches.” (Ridgway, in “The Ornithology of 
Illinois,” Vol. I, p. 119.) 
SWAINSON’S WARBLER. 
Helinaia swainsonii AUDUBON. 
Als’HIS VERY interesting Warbler was discovered by Rev. John Bachman in 1832, 
q near Charleston, S. C., but for upwards of forty years succeeding its discovery, 
our bird was so nearly lost sight of that only three specimens seem to have been taken, 
—one in Georgia, one in-Florida, and onein Cuba. The year 1873 brought an important 
contribution to our knowledge of this mysterious bird from Mr. N. C. Brown, who met 
this Warbler at Coosada, Elmore Co., Ala. Later on it was found also in Texas,’ 
Louisiana, southern Illinois, and Indiana. In May 1883, and again in spring 1884, 
Mr. Wm. Brewster of Cambridge, Mass., visited South Carolina, expressly for the 
purpose to search for Swainson’s Warbler. The result of his investigation he describes 
in his inimitable way in “The Auk” (Vol. II, 1885. p. p. 65—80). The paper is very 
long, but I cannot refrain from quoting the most interesting part of it. He writes as 
follows: 
“While ...the present species may occur at times in dry scrubby woods, or even 
in such open situations as orange groves, it certainly haunts by preference the ranker 
growth of the swamps, to which, indeed, it appears to be confined during the breeding 
season. In South Carolina, as elsewhere, the term swamp is somewhat general in 
application. As our Warbler is by no means equally general in his tastes but, on the 
contrary, exceptionably fastidious in the choice of a summer home, it is necessary to be 
more explicit. The particular kind of swamp to which he is most partial is known in 
local parlance as a ‘pine-land gall.’ It is usually a depression in the otherwise level 
surface, down which winds a brook, in places flowing swiftly between well-defined banks, 
in others divided into several sluggish channels or spreading about in stagnant pools, 
margined by a dense growth of cane, and covered with lily leaves or other aquatic 
vegetation. Its course through the open pine-lands is sharply marked by a belt of 
hardwood trees nourished to grand proportions by the rich soil and abundant moisture. 
Beneath, crumbling logs cumber the ground, while an undergrowth of dogwood’, sassa- 
fras, viburnum, etc., is interlaced and made well-nigh impenetrable by a net-work of 
grapevines and greenbriar. These belts—river bottoms they are in miniature—rarely 
éxceed a few rods in width; they may extend miles in a nearly straight line, but ordi- 
narily the brooks which they conceal form short tributaries of streams of larger size, 
1 Cornus florida. 
