l82 YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER 



At St. Mary's, Georgia, Brewster^ found that the favorite abode 

 of this species was the open piney woods. Their movements, he says, 

 "are much slower than those of Mniotilta, and there is much less of 

 that crouching, creeping motion. They do, indeed, spend much of 

 their time searching the larger branches for food, but it is more in the 

 manner of the Pine Warbler, and their motion is rather a hopping than 

 a creeping one. I have never seen them ascend the trees from the roots 

 to the topmost branches, as Audubon relates, but I occasionally 

 observed one clinging against the main trunk, for a moment, to seize an 

 insect, as will the Bluebird and many of the Warblers. Their hunting- 

 ground is for the most part, however, among the higher branches, and 

 a considerable part of their time is spent at the extremities of the limbs, 

 searching for food among the pine needles." 



Near Charleston, Wayne^ records this Warbler as a permanent 

 resident inhabiting mixed woods and live oaks where there is an abun- 

 dance of Spanish moss ; and at Raleigh, where it is a summer resident 

 only, Brimley states "while it is more or less numerous in large tracts 

 of pines and in all mixed woods containing large pines, it cannot be 

 called plentiful anywhere." 



Song. — Although I have long been familiar with the song of this 

 species it was not until the spring of 1905 that I was impressed with its 

 resemblance to the song of Seiurus motacilla. It is not so much the form 

 of the notes, ching-ching-ching, chicker-cher-wee, as their wild, ring- 

 ing, carrying quality which recalls the song of the Water-Thrush. The 

 bird pauses to sing at intervals in its search for food, and the conse- 

 quent frequent change of place together with^ the ventriloquial char- 

 acter of its notes makes it difficult to place the singer. 



The Yellow-throat's song is also compared with that of the Indigo 

 Bunting and not without reason. In any event, it is not likely to 

 escape the attention of the unobservant and, in Florida, after March i, 

 when it begins to sing, it is one of the conspicuous songsters of the 

 localities it favors. 



Nesting Site. — A nest found by Brewster^ was thirty-five feet up 

 in a southern pine, set flatly, not saddled, on a horizontal limb "nearly 

 midway between the juncture with the main trunk and the extremity 

 of the twigs, and was attached to the rough bark by silky fibers." 



After finding thirteen nests at from twenty to ninety feet from 

 the ground (usually about forty-five feet up and three to twelve feet 

 from the trunk of the tree, Brimley* states that this species selects for 

 a site "a horizontal limb usually, but not always, of a tall thin pine. 

 Sometimes it builds its nest where the limb forks, but more often right 



