LAND BIRDS. 613 
sionally two or three may be seen feeding lazily among the opening buds 
of chestnut, oak, and other forest trees, in company with numerous other 
warblers, but it is rarely seen in large numbers and sometimes an entire 
spring migration will pass without a glimpse of its flame-colored throat. 
In the spring of 1909, however, it was unusually abundant during migration, 
especially in the southeastern part of the state. Mr. J. Claire Wood found 
it common in Wayne county from May 16 to 23, and on the 16th counted 
260 Blackburnians among hosts of other migrants (Auk, XXVIII, 1911, 
23). The species appears to be a summer resident, in very small numbers, 
in most parts of the state, and at the north it unquestionably nests regu- 
larly in the hemlock forests and probably also in most large mixed forests 
of hardwoods and evergreens. 
It arrives from the south from the 1st to the 15th of May, rarely in 
the last few days of April. usually during the second week in May. Mr. 
N. A. Wood gives the average date of arrival, for twenty-five years, at 
Ann Arbor as May 8. We have records of specimens killed on Spectacle 
Reef Lighthouse, Lake Huron, May 11, 1888, May 17 and May 21, 1885, 
May 19, 1893, May 22, 1890, May 23, 1897, and May 28, 1892. There is 
a single record of one killed on Big Sable Light, Lake Superior, June 6, 
1894. After nesting it begins to move southward early in August and 
the movement continues, as shown by the records at lighthouses, all through 
September and the early part of October, a specimen being recorded from 
Spectacle Reef Light October 3, 1893 and others on September 24, 1892 
and September 27, 1886. Unlike many of our warblers this species seems 
to be rather less abundant in fall than in spring, but the young are quite 
inconspicuous and doubtless many slip past without being recognized. 
The Blackburnian Warbler has been found in the nesting season at 
various points in Michigan, but so far as we can learn the eggs have been 
taken but twice. Near Kalamazoo Mr. B. F. Syke found two nests, one, 
June 2, 1882, containing three eggs, placed thirty-five feet from the ground 
in a tamarack, the other, June 5, 1881, placed on a small upward-angling 
limb of a tamarack, four feet from the trunk and forty feet from the ground, 
and containing four eggs and one of the Cowbird. The outside of this 
nest consisted of tamarack twigs, held together with milkweed bark, and 
it was lined with horse hair, fine roots and woody fibres. Both nests were 
in tamarack swamps, but the usual location is said to be in hemlock trees, 
at considerable_heights, and the nest is said to be quite bulky and to consist 
very largely of the down of the cattail. ‘The eggs are three to five, 
greenish-white or very pale bluish-green, speckled or spotted, chiefly on 
or round the larger end, with brown or reddish brown and lilac gray. They 
average .68 by .50 inches” (Ridgway). The latest note on the nesting 
of this species in Michigan comes from Alex. G. Ruthven, and forms part 
of the manuscript report of Ruthven and Gaige on the Brown Lake region 
of Dickinson county in the summer of 1909. It is as follows: ‘This 
species was first noted July 17 in the hardwood forest. On this date a 
small flock of males, eight in number, were observed feeding in the hem- 
locks. They were all in the brilliant breeding plumage, but none were 
heard singing. An hour later a nest of this species was located by seeing 
a.female carry food to her young. The nest was about thirty feet from 
the ground in a small hemlock in the hemlock and beech forest. It was 
a loosely constructed affair made of small twigs and a few needles, and 
fastened insecurely to the branch six feet or more from the trunk. It 
