94 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
(C) ruricapitta. Nashville Warbler. 
(Quite common as a migrant through this State, where a very 
few regularly breed.) 
(a). About 44 inches long. Above, dull olive. Beneath, 
yellow. Back of head, slate. Crown more or less marked 
with chestnut-red. In ¢, head-markings indistinct, and crown 
patch often wanting. 
(b). The nest is placed on the ground, either in some open 
part of the woods, or amongst the shrubbery of some southerly- 
facing bank. It is commonly composed of dead leaves, strips 
of thin bark, grasses, etc., and is often lined with hairs. The 
eggs of each set are four, averaging about 63 X °50 of an inch, 
and are here laid about the first of June. The eggs are white, 
and vary between the extremes of being finely and thickly 
marked about the crown with lilac, and being thinly and 
coarsely blotched at the greater end with reddish-brown; these 
markings being sometimes combined. 
(c). The Nashville Warblers are summer-residents through 
out New England, but they are apparently more numerous in 
the northern than in the southern portions. In Massachusetts 
they are rare during summer, but are common at the time of 
their migrations, which here occur about the middle of May?’ 
and of September. In spring and autumn, whilst traveling, 
they habitually frequent lightly-timbered woodland, and some 
what, also, shrubbery about houses, but where they are resi- 
dent in summer they chiefly affect dry scrub-land, often that 
which is partially wooded. Their constant activity and indus- 
try, combined with their general adherence, while traveling, 
to the higher branches of the pines, chestnuts, oaks, and 
maples, which they usually prefer to other trees, often renders 
it difficult to detect their presence, even when quite abundant. 
They travel singly or in pairs and remain long in one tree or 
cluster, not being easily frightened. The two great difficulties 
in studying the habits of our warblers, are the almost nonde 
277 have seen them from the 5th until the 20th. 
