BLACKPOLL WARBLER 



199 



The Bird and its Haunts. — Although the BlackpoU is by no means 

 the last Warbler to arrive in the spring it is usually the last of the 

 transients to leave us for a more northern summer home, the length 

 of its stay combined with its abundance, making its passage one of 

 the most pronounced features of the vernal migration. It is as 

 deliberate in actions as it is in traveling, a fact which may either ac- 

 count for or may be accounted for by its extreme fatness at this season. 



In the fall the adults of both sexes take the inconspicuous 

 plumage of the young of the year when all are the subjects of much 

 patient scrutiny by the opera-glass student. They are, however, only 

 to be confused with the young of the Bay-breast from which they 

 differ as described above. Still some of the individuals of the latter 

 are too much like the BlackpoU to be distinguished in life. 



While a true Wood Warbler, the migrating BlackpoU host is so 

 numerous that stragglers, or even whole divisions, are found far from 

 the main army in our orchards and gardens and, in the fall, as Brewster 

 remarks, "they are often seen ilitting along fences and stone walls 

 that traverse open country or feeding on the ground in company with 

 various species of Sparrows, in grain stubbles and weed-infested 

 fields." 



At Monadnock, Gerald Thayer writes, the BlackpoU is abundant 

 in the fall and common in the spring, when "it is most dilatory of all 

 the late lingering migrants, staying sometimes till near the middle of 

 June, not only in the spruce and tamarack swamps about the mountain, 

 but even in the big street elm trees of the town of Keene, in the 

 neighboring low valley country (500 feet). While it lives in these 

 elms, it is a most persistent singer." (Thayer, MS.) 



In the summer I have found the BlackpoU to be an abundant resi- 

 dent of the stunted spruce woods on the Magdalen Islands, a type of 

 growth which, when nesting, it also frequents in other localities. 



Song. — "A succession of hesitating, staccato, unmusical notes 

 varying greatly in volume. The notes separated, not combined in 

 twos, as in the Black and White Warbler's song." (Farwell, MS.) 



"Sometimes the tempo is so accelerated as to constitute a rapid, 

 sibilant, trill. The crescendo and diminuendo effects, however, are 

 always present, as far as I have observed." (Fuertes, MS.) 



"Although some phases of the Blackpoll's very changeable song are 

 much like variations of the songs of other members of the Warbler quin- 

 tette above mentioned, its usual performance is decidedly different. Not 

 so much in tone, — though that has its peculiarities, — as in delivery and 

 phrasing. It is a string of from six to twelve or more, short, equal and 

 equally-divided sibilant notes, cobweb-thin and glassy-clear, — uttered 



