WARBLERS 305 



in the breeding season to coniferous timber, we have found 

 singing males in two instances in June in dry oak woods. 

 The nest has never been found in Alabama, but in the North 

 it is usually placed in evergreen trees — pines, hemlocks, or 

 cedars. Verdi Burch has found 20 or more nests at Branch- 

 port, N. Y., and all were in hemlocks, from 10 to 40 feet from 

 the ground.f 



The song of this warbler is a characteristic little ditty of 

 four or five notes, which Langille describes thus : "Wee-wee- 

 sv^ee, each syllable uttered slowly and well drawn out; that 

 before the last in a lower tone than the two former and the last 

 syllable noticeably on the upward slide ; the whole being a sort 

 of insect tone, altogether peculiar, and by no means unpleas- 

 ing."* 



Food habits. — Professor Barrows, writing of the food 

 habits of this bird, says: "Both spring and fall it may be 

 found gorging itself with plant lice and searching the twigs 

 and leaves for span-worms, leaf-rollers, and harmful insects 

 of every kind. It eats berries, also, and possibly a few seeds, 

 being particularly fond of the berries of the poison ivy and 

 to a less extent of those of junipers."* 



KIRTLAND WARBLER: Dendroica kirtlatuUi (Baird). 



State record. — The breeding range of the Kirtland, rarest 

 of the American warblers, is restricted, so far as known, to a 

 comparatively small area in north-central Michigan. The 

 only record of the bird from Alabama is that of A. A. Saun- 

 ders, who says : "I met with an individual of this species at 

 Woodbine, May 10 [1908], a Sunday afternoon, when I unfor- 

 tunately had no gun. I watched the bird closely for some 

 10 or 15 minutes. Its actions resembled those of the pine 

 warbler, but its song was rather like that of the black-throated 

 green."** 



General habits. — This rather large warbler is described as 

 a graceful walker, "equally at home on trees or on the ground, 

 where the habit of bobbing its tail is very characteristic." It 



tBurch v., in Chapman, The Warblers of North America, p. 161, 1907. 

 tLaneille, J. H., Our Birds in Their Haunts, p. 272, 1884. 

 •Barrows, W. B., Michigan Bird Life, p. 618, 1912. 

 •♦Saunders, A. A., The Auk, vol. 25, p. 422, 1908. 



