318 BIRDS OP ALABAMA 



bush; sometimes in bushes or briers a few feet above the 

 ground. 



Food habits. — Forbush's account of the food habits of the 

 northern yellow-throat (brachidactyla) will doubtless apply 

 equally well to the present race. He says : 



In pastures the yellow-throat eats many leaf hoppers, which 

 are abundant among' the grass and low-growing herbage that 

 it frequents ♦ * *, The yellow-throat, on account of its de- 

 struction of leaf hoppers and grasshoppers, may be ranked ~ 

 among the useful birds of the fields. In orchards it often feeds 

 very largely on cankerworms, going long distances from its 

 nest to get these cjvterpillars to feed to its young. * * * Case 

 bearers, leaf rollers, and many other destructive caterpillars 

 are greedily devoured and it also catches and eats both butter- 

 flies and moths in considerable numbers. Along the borders 

 of woods it is very destructive to many beetles, flies, and espe- 

 cially to plant lice, of some species of which it is very fond. 

 It often goes to grain fields, where, so Wilson says, it eats 

 insects that infest thenrut 



FLORIDA YELLOW-THROAT: Geothhjpis trichas ignota 



Chapman. 



State records. — The southern race of the Maryland yellow- 

 throat occurs as a summer resident over the whole of southern 

 and central Alabama as far north as Tusqaloosa and Shelby 

 Counties (fig. 25). Breeding specimens have been taken on 

 Dauphin Island, and at Mobile, Dothan, Abbeville, Scale, Au- 

 taugaville, Hayneville, Hollins.J Auburn, Wilsonville, and 

 Tuscaloosa. An immature specimen taken in autumn at 

 Guntersville is in the collection of Mrs. Bessie R. Samuel. This 

 bird is a straggler this far north, as the breeding form at that 

 locality is trichas. 



A few individuals of the southern yellow-throat spend the 

 winter in the lower counties of the State, but the majority 

 pass on to Florida and Cuba. At Orange Beach, late in 

 January, I saw but one bird of this species ; several were seen, 

 February 6, 1912, in the Mobile marshes, and one at Nigger 

 Lake, December 1, 1915. At Coosada a solitary male was re- 



tForbush, E. H., Useful Birds and Their Protection, pp. 187-188, 1907. 

 iSaunders, A. A., The Auk, vol. 25, p. 423, 1908. 



