The Audubon Warbler 



Taken in San Bernardino County Photo by L. Huey & D. R. Dickey 



A DISCOURAGED BABY— AUDUBON WARBLER 



found the keynote to a life-long acquaintanceship with one of the dearest 

 and bravest of birds. 



Audubon's Warbler as a songster deserves some notice. His song, 



to be sure, is brief and 

 its theme nearly invari- 

 able, as is the case with 

 most warblers; but there 

 is about it a joyous, racy 

 quality, which flicks the 

 admiration and calls 

 time on Spring. The 

 singer posts in a high 

 fir tree, that all may 

 hear, and the notes pour 

 out rapidly, crowding 

 close upon each other, 

 till the whole company 

 is lost in a cloud of spray 

 at the end of the ditty. 

 At close quarters, the 

 "filling" is exquisite, but 

 if one is a little way removed, where he catches only the crests of the 

 sound waves, it is natural to call the effort a trill. At a good distance 

 it is even comparable to the pure, monotonous tinkling of Junco. 



I once heard these two dissimilar birds in a song contest. The 

 Warbler stood upon a favorite perch of his, a spindling, solitary fir some 

 hundred feet in height, while the Junco held a station even higher on 

 the tip of another fir a block away. Here they had it back and forth, 

 with honors surprisingly even, until both were tired, whereupon (and 

 not till then) a Spotted Towhee ventured to bring forth his prosy rattle. 

 It was like Sambo and his "bones" after an opera. 



The range of Audubon's Warbler in summer is nearly coincident 

 with that of evergreen timber, if we except the digger pine (Pinns sabin- 

 iana) on one hand, and the desert juniper (Juniperus utahensis) on 

 the other. It does not, however, frequent all the more open pine woods 

 of the north central Sierras, nor does it occur in the redwood or asso- 

 ciated forests of the northwestern coast. Although the conditions 

 which obtain in Humboldt and Del Norte counties are very similar to 

 those which extend into Alaska as the "humid coast belt," the Audubon 

 does not appear to breed with us anywhere near sea level, as it does 

 in Washington; nor is it found below strict "Transition" upon the eastern 

 slopes of the Sierras. But given its altitudinal requirements, the bird 



475 



