178 BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER 



Blue, the Northern Parula and the Canada. While all the other sum- 

 mer Warblers of Monadnock seem better pleased with various sorts of 

 lighter timber, these four are commonest in the small remaining tracts 

 of primeval woodland, and in the heaviest and oldest second growth. 

 But despite this general community of habit, each of the four has 

 marked minor idiosyncrasies. The Blackburnian favors very big 

 trees, particularly hemlocks, and spends most of its life high above 

 the ground. The Parula is most at home in boggy woods, where the 

 ground is covered deep with sphagnum and the stunted trees are 

 veiled in dangling Usnea; the Black-throated Blue haunts the 

 heavy undergrowth in drier woods; while the sweet voiced Canada, 

 — also, and even more strictly, a bird of the deciduous undergrowth, — 

 is partial to damp hillside woods and brook-meshed swales, but, as a rule 

 avoids the spongy bogs in which Parulas and pitcher-plants most 

 flourish. But the preeminent forest Warbler of the group is the 

 Blackburnian, the lover of deep mixed growth and the upper branches 

 of the biggest conifers. It is rather a restless and quick-moving 

 Warbler, though not shy, and without any (?) very peculiar tricks 

 of pose or gesture." 



At Branchport, N. Y., Burtch writes that the Blackburnian is 

 a rare summer resident breeding in hemlocks along gullies in com- 

 pany with Black-throated Green and Magnolia Warblers. In northern 

 Minnesota, according to Preston, it favors the black spruce, singing 

 from some high conspicuous perch, or feeding while ascending from 

 branch to branch to the "cone-clad top, from which it falls lightly to 

 another tree, and so continues the search." 



Song. — "Its voice is thin, but, unlike the Parula's, exquisitely 

 smooth, in all the many variations of its two (or more) main songs. 

 One of these two, in my experience, is much less changeable than the 

 other. This is the simpler one, which may be syllabled Tsivvi, tsiwi, 

 tsiwi, tsiwi ; or a variation, — Sissi-vit, sissi-vit, slssi vit, slssi vit; — 

 deliberately, almost languidly uttered, in both cases, with a fine, 

 'kinglety,' sibilant voice-tone. The other common song, though it 

 begins in much the same way, is more hurried throughout, and ends, 

 on a sharply-ascending scale, with a sort of explosion of small, 

 crowded notes. Both utterances vary widely, and the one last 

 described is about the most changeable of all the Warblers' songs I 

 know. Even the tone-quality is not quite constant, for though it never, 

 in my experience, varies toward huskiness, it does occasionally range 

 toward full-voiced richness. Thus I have heard a Blackburnian that 

 began his otherwise normal song with two or three clear notes much 

 like those of the most full and smooth-voiced performance of the 



