NASHVILLE WARBLER 



95 



hacks and other scrubby bushes at their bases and around their borders, 

 the Nashvilles build their nests. But such is merely their most char- 

 acteristic home. They are so common and widespread that it is hard 

 to get out of earshot of their song during the breeding season. Dark 

 spruce woods they do not favor, nor big, mixed virgin timber; but 

 even in these places, one is likely to find them wherever there is a 

 little 'oasis' of sunlight and smaller deciduous growth. They are 

 fairly common among the scanty spruces, mountain ashes and white 

 birches of the rocky upper ridge of Mt. Monadnock, almost to the 

 top — 3,169 feet. 



"The Nashville's proper domain or 'beat', during the breeding 

 season, lies between the ground and the tops of the lower trees — 

 mainly deciduous trees. He is a little, active, foliage-colored Warbler, 

 un-showily yellow-breasted, inconspicuously gray-headed (except for 

 a yellow throat, and a rufous crown-spot which scarcely shows at all) 

 with a dim white eye-ring, but without white tail-spots, wing-bars or 

 any other bold markings. In demeanor it is one of the most nervously 

 agile and restless of the gleaning Warblers." {Thayer, MS.) 



Song. — "The Nashville has at least two main perch-songs, and 

 a flight-song, all subject to a good deal of variation. It belongs decid- 

 edly among the full-voiced Warblers; — the Yellow, Magnolia, Black- 

 throated Green, Chestnut-side, Hooded, Canadian, etc., on the one 

 hand, as compared with the Parula, Blackbumian, Cape May, 

 Black and White, Blackpoll, Bay-breast, etc., on the other. Its com- 

 moner perch-song consists of a string of six or eight or more, lively, 

 rapid notes, suddenly congested into a pleasant, rolling twitter, lower 

 in key than the first part of the song, and about half as long. In the 

 other perch-song, the notes of what correspond to the rolling twitter 

 are separate and richer, and the second part of the song is longer and 

 more noticeable than the first, whose notes are few and slurred, while 

 the whole is more languidly delivered. The differences are hard to 

 describe intelligibly ; but in reality they are pronounced and constant. 

 The flight-song, a fairly common performance in late summer, is sung 

 from the height of five to forty feet above the (usually low) tree-tops. 

 It is like the commoner perch-songs, but more hurried, and slightly 

 elaborated,— often with a few chippings added, at both ends. Among 

 the Nashville's calls a very small, dry chip, and a more metallic, louder 

 chip, somewhat Water-Thru sh-like, are noteworthy. It also chippers 

 like a young Warbler or a Black-throated Green." (Thayer, MS.) 



