220 BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER. 
It is only since the beginning of the last quarter of this century that reliable 
information on the nesting habits of the Blackburnian Warbler was given. Mr. H. D. 
Minot found a nest in northern New Hampshire and another in a thick hemlock wood 
near Boston. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, now Curator of the Division of Ornithology and 
Mammalogy of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., gives the following 
excellent description of the nest and eggs of this beautiful bird :* 
“On the 23rd of May, 1879, my lamented friend, the late A. Jenings Doyan, pointed 
out to me, high in a lofty pine, the yet unfinished nest of the Blackburnian Warbler. 
The exact locality was a grove of large white pines! on a dry hill just east of Black 
River, at Lyon’s Falls, Lewis County, N. Y. Some days previously Mr. Doyan had ob- 
served the female bird carrying in her bill a downy substance which afterwards proved 
to be the tufted seeds of the cat-tail. By the aid of a field-glass, after many hours of 
patient watching, he finally discovered the nest. On the 3rd of June he ascended the 
tree and secured the prize. It was saddled on a horizontal limb twenty-five and a half 
metres (about 84 feet) from the ground, and three metres (about 10 feet) from the 
trunk. The limb measured 15 mm. in diameter where the nest was attached. The nest 
contained four fresh eggs of the Blackburnian Warbler and one of the Cowbird. 
Authentic published descriptions of the nest and eggs of this Warbler are so few in 
number, and so meagre in exact details, that I make apology for presenting the follow- 
ing: .... The ground-color is pale bluish-green, spotted. all over with umber-brown of 
varying intensity, the spots tending as usual to form a ring at the large end. One 
differs from the rest in being well sprinkled with blotches of rich, dark umber, which 
-coalesce into a broad zone around the large end. The nest is large, substantial, and 
very compact. It consists almost entirely of a thick and densely woven mat of the soft 
down of the cat-tail’, with seeds attached, and is lined with fine lichens, horse hair, 
and a piece of white thread. On the outside is an irregular covering of small twigs and 
rootlets, with here and there a stem of moss or a bit of lichen...” 
Prof. Wm. Brewster found the Blackburnian Warbler breeding at Winchendon, Mass., 
about sixteen miles south of Mt. Monadnock. As usual, Mr. Brewster gives an inimit- 
able description of the locality.** According to his notes, the surface of the country 
is everywhere broken and hilly, very wild and picturesque, and mainly wooded. On the 
hills and drier portions of the lowlands, the forests are composed chiefly of white pine, 
hemlock and various deciduous trees. The swamps are covered with a dense, almost 
impenetrable and rather stunted growth of black spruces, balsams, and larches, with a 
very few white spruces. The hardwood timber on the uplands is composed chiefly of 
beech, red and sugar maple, yellow and paper birch, with a sprinkling of red oaks and 
basswoods, a very few chestnuts and, more or less scattering, old-growth spruces. The 
underwood is chiefly of hobble bush* and striped and mountain maples. In places yew 
is also found. About swamp edges the beautiful pink azalea‘ is everywhere common. 
Ferns of various species flourish in great luxuriance wherever the soil is damp enough 
for them, and a deep, suggy carpet of sphagnum covers the ground in the swamps. 
On the hill-sides, especially under white pines, the exquisite little Linnea borealis is 
* See ‘The Auk,’’ Vol. II, 1885, p. 103.—** "The Auk,” Vol. V, 1888, p. 386—393. 
1 Pinus strobus, 2 Typha latifolia, % Viburnum lantanoides, 4 Azalea nudifiora. 
