302 THE BIRDS 
and (along the coast) from Massachusetts south to south- 
western Missouri, northern Mississippi, northwestern 
Georgia, Florida, and the Bahamas, and north locally to 
central Michigan, southern Ontario, and New Hampshire; 
breeds rarely and locally in the Gulf States; winters from 
central Florida through the Bahamas and the West Indies. 
This warbler arrives from the south the second week 
in April, and by the first week in May they are common. 
Those remaining to breed usually start their nests by 
the end of the first week in May. It is one of our most 
common warblers and a good songster until the young are 
hatched, when both birds are kept busy procuring food, 
especially should there be in the nest an extra husky young 
of the Cowbird. These warblers’ nests seem especially 
suited for the depository for a Cowbird’s egg, few early 
sets being without at least one in this section. I have 
found it a rule with these warblers, that when the Cow- 
bird’s egg is deposited before a second warbler egg is laid, 
or two Cowbird eggs in an incomplete set of two or less 
warblers, the nest is invariably deserted. The earliness 
or lateness of the season has much to do with the location 
of their nests. Late springs, when the foliage is retarded 
and little shelter or protection is given the nest, it is 
invariably placed in a clump of holly serub, or wax 
myrtle, whose foliage remains green throughout the entire 
winter. Sometimes I have found them in a small sapling 
cedar, placed near the trunk and ten feet from the ground, 
other times equally as high or higher, on a horizontal 
limb of a tree on the edge of a clearing. The second- 
erowth scrub of clearing, or low bushes on the edge of 
woods is, however, their favorite nesting haunt, few of 
such places being without one or more pair of these 
warblers. The nests are handsome affairs in most cases, 
