FEMALE C@RULEAN WARBLER. 285 
The specimen here represented was procured on the banks 
of the Schuylkill, near Mantua village, on the Ist of August 
1825. It was very active, skipping about on the branches of 
an oak, attentively searching the leaves, and crevices of the 
bark, and at intervals taking its food on the wing, in the 
manner of the flycatchers. It warbled in an undertone, not 
very unlike that of the blue-grey flycatcher of Wilson (Sylvia 
coerulea, L.), a circumstance that would lead to the supposi- 
tion of its being a male in summer dress ; but on dissection it 
proved to be a female. 
The female azure warbler is four and three-quarter inches 
long, and eight and a quarter in extent.* Bill, blackish above, 
pale bluish beneath ; feet, light blue ; irides, very dark brown ; 
head and neck above, and back, rich silky green, brighter on 
the head, and passing gradually into dull bluish on the rump ; 
line from the bill over the eye, whitish, above which is the 
indication of a blue-black line widening behind ; a dusky streak 
passes through the eye; cheeks, dusky greenish ; beneath, 
entirely whitish, strongly tinged with yellow on the chin; 
sides of the neck, breast, flanks, and vent, streaked with dark 
bluish ; the base of the whole plumage is bluish white ; inferior 
tail-coverts, pure white; wings and tail, very similar to those 
of the male, though much less brilliant ; smaller wing-coverts, 
bluish, tipt with green; middling and large wing-coverts, 
blackish, widely tipt with white, constituting two very appa- 
rent bands across the wings, the white slightly tinged with 
yellowish at tip; spurious wing, blackish; quill-feathers, 
blackish, edged externally with green, internally and at tip 
with whitish, the three nearest the body more widely so; the 
inferior wing-coverts, white; tail, hardly rounded, feathers, 
dusky slate, slightly tinged with bluish externally, and lined 
with pure white internally, each with a white spot towards the 
tip on the inner web. ‘This spot is larger on the outer feathers, 
* The dimensions given by Wilson of the male must be rather below 
the standard, as they are inferior to those of the female ; whereas all 
the specimens we examined were larger, as usual. 
