194 



BAY-BREASTED WARBLER 



Brewster^ saw "upwards of forty" Bay-breasts near Cambridge, R 

 Usually, however, he remarks, they "occur singly and in dense wc 

 especially such as consist largely of white pines, hemlocks or c 

 coniferous trees." 



"The southward flight of Bay-breasts," this author contii 

 "sometimes begins as early as August 23, and usually lasts n« 

 through September. At this season the birds are given to frequer 

 gray birches and dense, swampy maple woods and are nearly ah 

 found in company with Blackpoll Warblers." 



The Bay-breast, Gerald Thayer writes, is "often commoi 

 Monadnock in the spring migration, and may possibly breed 1 

 Apparently it is never common in the fall. It associates often 

 BlackpoUs, in loose bands, which drift through the scrub-lands 

 forest-borders like bands of Titmice. But the Bay-breasts usi 

 leave Monadnock for the north at least a week before the Blackpc 



"Bay-breasts and BlackpoUs alike are rather big and rather d 

 ily-adorned Warblers, and both have an almost vireo-like leisureli 

 of movement. Adult male Bay-breasts in life are apt to look very d 

 — heavily clouded with deep brown and gray, relieved by a consj 

 ously bright, big, white-buff spot on each side of the fore-r 

 Females look much like female BlackpoUs, but are grayer — less g 

 — and usually show some blurred pale chestnut flecks on their s 

 The call-notes of these two twin-like species (Bay-breast and Bl 

 poll) I have never learned to tell apart. They are fine and sharp, 

 sometimes louder than the average Dendroicine tsipping." (Th 

 MS.) 



About Umbagog, where it breeds, Maynard^ found the '. 

 breast the most abundant Warbler. It inhabited all the wooded 

 tions and frequented the tops of tall trees. 



Song. — "Heard from migrants the Bay-breast's song is a i 

 weak, monotonous saw-filing note" (Farwell, MS.) 



Widmann records the full song at St. Louis, on September 

 1897. 



"In a grouping based on songs, the Bay-breast should stand 

 quintette with the Blackburnian, the Blackpoll, the Black and "Vi 

 and the Cape May. These five heard singing together in the i 

 trees, as I have heard them on the Hudson River, make 'confi 

 worse than death' for any bird-student but the most adept. But 

 patience and a good ear one can learn to diflferentiate them su 

 All five are thin-voiced, 'sibilant', singers ; b,ut each has its own si 

 prevailing peculiarity of tone, in addition to the differences, v; 



