202 BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER. 
papers brought long reports of ‘unknown, and never described, but beautiful tropical 
birds having missed their way and having been driven by heavy winds to the far North.” 
Now, almost all of these birds were Warblers, and all were known for many years to 
every ornithologist of the country. The majority of Warblers found near Milwaukee on 
the shore of Lake Michigan were Magnolia, Blackburnian, Black-throated Green, Summer, 
Cape May, and BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLERS. 
Among the Warblers of the Dendroica-group. the last named species is my special 
favorite, not because it is more beautiful and interesting than others, but because I 
made its acquaintance many years ago, when rambling about in the swampy thickets 
of central Wisconsin when only a boy. In the Northern States this pretty bird’ arrives 
with many other species about the middle of May, when the apple trees of the orchards 
and the white thorns and wild crab trees on the woodland borders are in full bloom. 
It tarries usually until the last days of May, when it suddenly disappears. Unlike the 
most of its allies, it is more sociable, being frequently observed in companies from four 
to six. Its breeding’ range we may look for in Canada, north nearly to the Arctic 
regions, but it sparingly breeds south to central Wisconsin, Michigan, northern New 
York, and Connecticut. In the beautiful Alleghanies it breeds from northern Georgia 
northward. Mr. William Brewster enumerates it in his model list “On the Birds of 
Western North Carolina.’”’* Speaking of its occurrence there, he says: 
“J heard the first Black-throated Blue Warbler on the crest of the Cowee Mount- 
ains, but at the time supposed it to be a belated migrant. On the following day, 
however, others were met with at Cullasaja Falls, and along the road between that 
point and Highlands many were seen or heard. In the neighborhood of Highlands they 
were everywhere numerous, and in the extensive rhododendron swamps, literally swarm- 
ing and evidently settled for the season, if not actually breeding. Mr. Boynton tells me 
that he regularly hears them singing in these swamps through June and July, but he has 
never found the nest. On the Black Mountains they were scarcely less numerous in 
belts of rhododendrons bordering streams at between 3,200 and 4,500 feet, but, curiously 
enough, none were seen above the latter elevation, although the balsam forests on the 
upper slopes of these mountains would seem to furnish congenial haunts.” 
In other localities, especially in Connecticut, this Warbler finds a congenial home 
in the exceedingly charming laurel or kalmia thickets, consisting almost entirely of 
Kalmia latifolia, one of our most beautiful shrubs. In Wisconsin I found it during the 
breeding season always on the borders of swampy woods, where dogwood, viburnum, 
and the leather or moose wood! grew in great luxuriance. When in June 1872 I was 
rambling about in the swampy woods of Plymouth, Sheboygan County, Wis., I found 
a nest of this Warbler in a low but rather dense shrub of the leather wood. Dogwood, 
wild goose-berry and huckle-berry bushes grew near it. As the locality was shaded by 
spreading elms and ash trees, the rays of the sun could not strike. It was built in 
upright branches about twelve inches above the ground, consisting chiefly of silvery 
fibres of the milkweed?, spider’s nests and plant down. The interior was lined with 
fine bark-strips, a few hairs, and the rusty down of the cinnamon fern, which usually 
* See The “Auk,’? Vol. III, 1886, p. 94—112, 173—179, 
1 Dirca palustris. 2 Asclepias, 
