346 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



215. Dendroica discolor (Vieill.). 

 Prairie Warbler. 



Locally common summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



May 2, 1890, one seen, Belmont, W. Faxon. 



May 8 — September 15. 

 September 25, 1889, one seen, Belmont, W. Faxon. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 28 — June j. 



Nuttall says that on June 4 — probably in 1830 or 1831, although the year 

 is not mentioned — he came upon a pair of Prairie Warblers " busily engaged col- 

 lecting flies and larvae from a clump of young locust trees, in the woods of Mount 

 Auburn, and occasionally they flitted among the Virginian junipers." While he 

 was watching them the female went directly to the nest which was "in the forks 

 of a low barberry bush, near by,"i and contained four eggs. 



In the days of my youth a tract of some twelve or fifteen acres of neglected 

 and rather barren land, lying immediately to the southward of the more elevated 

 portion of Mount Auburn, and now included in the Cemetery but at that time 

 separated from it by a high fence, was sprinkled with white and pitch pines, 

 Virginia junipers, clusters of locust trees and thickets of barberry bushes. It 

 was here, perhaps, that Nuttall saw his Prairie Warblers. If so, the birds had 

 deserted the locality before I first became acquainted with it. Nor can I learn 

 that they have been noted anywhere in or near Mount Auburn since Nuttall's 

 time. 



As long ago as 1867, however, I found them breeding numerously along 

 the ridge that extends from Arlington to Waverley, and some ten or fifteen years 

 later I ascertained that they also occurred rather commonly on and near Prospect 

 Hill, Waltham, and sparingly or sporadically at several other places in that town 

 and in Lexington. They have continued to occupy most of these stations down 

 to the present time. 



In the Arlington-Belmont district, where their chosen haunts are 'cedar pas- 

 tures,' Prairie Warblers nest usually, if not invariably, in barberry bushes, pre- 



1 T. Nuttall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Land Birds, 

 1832, 395- 



