BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 343 



212. Dendroica vigorsii (Aud.). 

 Pine Warbler. Pine-creeping Warbler. Pine Creeper. 



Locally common summer resident ; of occasional occurrence in winter, also. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



March 29, 1903, one seen and heard, Arlington, J. R. Mann. 



April 10 — October 20. (Winter.) 

 November 25, 1869, one taken, Watertown, W. Brewster. 



NESTING dates. 



May 20 — 30. 



Excepting at its seasons of migration, when it occasionally appears in apple 

 orchards and even in city gardens, the Pine Warbler is seldom seen far from the 

 trees from which it takes its name. In the Cambridge Region, as well as else- 

 where in eastern Massachusetts, it shows a marked preference for pitch pines. 

 Throughout Belmont, Arlington, Lexington and Waltham, wherever these trees 

 grow numerously, whether apart from other species or intermingled with white 

 pines, hemlocks, cedars and various kinds of deciduous trees, the Pine Warbler 

 is almost sure to be found from the lOth or 15 th of April nearly to the close 

 of October or even well into November. Thus it arrives earlier in spring and 

 lingers later into the autumn than do any of the other members of its family 

 which pass the summer in our neighborhood. Although somewhat less social 

 than most of them, it often joins the large ' mixed flocks ' which they and other 

 small insectivorous birds form in July and August. 



Dr. Walter Woodman says that the Pine-creeping Warbler sometimes 

 passed the summer in Norton's Woods between 1866 and 1874. About the 

 same time, as Mr. Henshaw has testified in a letter printed in the Introduction 

 to the present Memoir, "a few pairs" nested in certain groves of pitch pines 

 near Brookline Street, Cambridgeport. Pine Warblers have long since ceased 

 to frequent the latter locality, while at the former they are now seen only 

 during migration. They have also nearly if not quite deserted the region 

 lying immediately to the westward of Mount Auburn where, up to about 1880, 

 their mellow, trilling songs were among the most frequent, as well as charac- 

 teristic and pleasing, sounds of spring and early summer. As lately as June 

 18, 1898, however, I heard a bird singing in the tall white pines at Elmwood 



