Lancaster, Mass.
1902.
June 22
  Clear and cool with light north-west wind.
  During a walk from Miss Holman's to the village this
morning I found a young Warbling Vireo in the grass by the
roadside and heard several others in the upper branches of the
large elms that shade the main street. They uttered a
nasal hae (or ae or eh) at perfectly regular intervals (twice every
three seconds by my watch) sometimes keeping up the cry for
fifteen or twenty minutes without cessation and then, after a
brief rest, beginning again. This call is closely similar to that
of the old birds but somewhat shorter & more insistent as well
as given much more frequently & continuously. Despite the
fact that most of the young appear to have left their nests
the old males were singing almost as freely this morning as
they did two or three weeks ago.
  The adult male Orioles have nearly ceased fluting & I have
seen but few of late nor do I hear many young. I fear
that most of them which settled in such numbers along
the Lancaster streets a month of more ago have been poisoned
by "spraying." There was one brood of young near Miss Holman's
house to-day, however, calling incessantly in the nest for food
which their parents brought to them at short intervals. I
judged that they were still rather small for their voices were
still soft and liquid. I noted their cries as chi-i-i-i-i
chi-i-i-i-i etc. Just before they leave the nest this will
change into their insistent, drawling and really trying here-we-are-
mamma as I recorded it in my notes years ago.
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