PRAIRIE WARBLER. 97 



sea level to about an altitude of a thousand feet. The highest point 

 at which it has been recorded is Old Fort in western North Carolina 

 at about fifteen hundred feet. From northwestern Georgia, through 

 Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania, it ranges up 

 to a thousand feet elevation. Throughout most of the Mississippi 

 Valley the prairie warbler is rare. This is especially noticeable in 

 Illinois and Indiana, where so many other warblers are common. It 

 breeds locally but not uncommonly in southern and central Michigan 

 and southern Ontario — rarely or accidentally in southeastern Wiscon- 

 sin — and westward in southern Iowa, eastern Nebraska, and eastern 

 Kansas. In the three States last mentioned its breeding range has 

 been traced up to just a thousand feet elevation. In Nebraska it has 

 been noted, in migration, as high as 1,300 feet at Westpoint. In 

 southwestern Missouri it breeds at Pierce Cit}^ (1,300 feet), which is 

 the farthest point to the southwest at which it occurs regularl3\ The 

 species is not uncommon locally in northern Mississippi, and was once 

 reported from the coast at Beauvoir; it has also been recorded once 

 from Louisiana and once from Texas. 



The prairie warbler is principally a bird of the Carolinian zone, 

 though a few breed in the Alleghenian of central Michigan and west- 

 ern Penns3dvania. In parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island it is 

 common localh", as it is also in eastern Massachusetts, where it is char- 

 acteristic of the barberry districts. In the Austroriparian zone of the 

 South Atlantic and Gulf States a few of the species breed. The bird 

 is, however, rare in the Gulf strip of the Austroriparian zone. 



Winte?' range. — The western boundary of regular westward distri- 

 bution of the prairie warbler runs southeast from eastern Kansas 

 through central Alabama to Florida. The winter home of the species 

 includes all the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles. Few birds have a 

 wider distribution in the West Indies. The species is recorded in all 

 the larger and in 26 of the smaller islands. In the Lesser Antilles it 

 ranges to St. Eustatius^' and St. Christopher,^ where it was found in 

 the spring and fall of 1890. To the south of Cuba it has been taken 

 on Little Ca3^man^ and Cayman Brack-/ on the Swan Islands half way 

 to Yucatan; on Mujeres'^ and Cozumel Islands^ off the coast of Yuca- 

 tan, and on the island of Bonacca-^ near the north coast of Honduras 

 (the southernmost point from which it is reported). The northern limit 

 of the winter range is about the center of Florida, a little farther 

 north than the bird reaches in the Bahamas. 



Spring migration. — The records of spring migration of the prairie 

 warbler in Florida are indefinite, owing to the fact that the bird 

 winters in the southern part of the State. Some unusually early 



«Cory, Auk, VIII, p. 47, 1891. cCory, Auk, YI, p. 31, 1889. 



^>Cory, Auk, VIII, p. 48, 1891. f^Salvin, Ibis, p. 250, 1888. 



'^ Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. YIII, p. 564, 1885. 

 6152— No. 18—04 7 



