OLOGIST [Vol. 12-No. 10 



OEKITH 



The birds lingered so long that it was evident 

 they were preparing to breed and I was becom- 

 ing more interested, and th-ough seemingly use- 

 less, could not resist n desire to search for their 

 nests. I visited the colony with that intention, 

 about the last of April, and finding the warblers 

 in the highest pines only, naturally concluded 

 their nests could not be elsewhere. It was 

 most impossible that so small a nest could be 

 seen from below, and iu case it (iould, there 

 was a trunk between it and the ground that I 

 did not care to scale ; ■ indeed my enthusiasm 

 was so diminished that I was not sure I wanted 

 to see a nest, so I left without any intention of 

 returning, though I knew little or nothing was 

 known of the nesting habits of the bird. 



About the middle of May, while passing a 

 body of pines of the lesser variety, I heard the 

 peculiar song of D. dominica and thinking a 

 pair had wandered from the others, I hastened 

 to the spot whence it came, but when there 

 heard the voice near a creek a short distance 

 away; so supposing the bird was straying 

 about feeding, I passed on. I heard the song 

 on several occasions afterward, however, and 

 was convinced that the pair was breeding, but 

 did not have time to investigate. 



On June 4th I decided to follow the birds un- 

 til one should go to its nest, though I expected 

 to find them feeding young. On nearing the 

 pines I heard the song of the male exactly 

 where I heard it first, some weeks befgre. 

 Guided by this, I found him high in a pine, his 

 mouth then- well filled, though this seemed no 

 obstacle to his song which was uttered at regu- 

 lar intervals. I was expecting every moment 

 to see him leave for the nest, but he continued 

 to fly from tree to tree gathering more food, 

 scanning the limbs to the end, climbing out on 

 the tips of the needle-shaped leaves and look- 

 ing over, head downward. When the game 

 flew, he took it in very quickly, after the fash- 

 ion of the Fly-catchers. Even in the smaller 

 pines he evinced his disposition to feed near 

 the top. I was astonished to see this bird de- 

 scend from a height of sixty feet and alight by 

 his nest in a small pine near me. After the 

 height at which I had always seen him, there 

 was his nest only nineteen feet from the 

 ground ! Not a note passed and my hopes ran 

 high, thinking I had caught him feeding his 

 mate on her nest. It is useless to say I clam- 

 bered up; I could not stay away. The nest 

 contained three birds, quite young and one egg 

 containing no embryo, which made a very nice 

 specimen. 



The nest was not pensile, as claimed by Nutt- 



all, but built closely to the main body of the 

 tree, the bottom part resting on a short dead 

 stick. It does not contain a sprig of moss nor 

 a lichen as described by Audubon, but resem- 

 .bles closely that ot the Pine Warbler, which I 

 hope will be described later, being about half 

 as large and is composed outwardly of about 

 the same materials, yet somewhat finer in qual- 

 ity, and is lined with a quantity of horse-hair 

 instead of feathers. It has one prominent fea- 

 ture, however, and there is some attempt at 

 weaving. I was surprised to see a nest so 

 warm and compact at that time, so far south. 

 I. did not see the mother bird but shot her mate 

 which went with the nest and egg to the U. S. 

 National Museum. The egg is white rather 

 heavily spotted with brown. , . , 



■ n &Q ,. XII.Oct .l8S7 p. /y'T'^ 



j Notes on the Nesting of the Yellow- 

 Throated Warbler. 



BV WALTER UOXIE, FltOGMORE, S. C. 



I In a recent issue of the O. & O. (October, 

 1887), two articles appeared on the Nesting of 

 the Yellow-throaled Warbler (Dcndmnxt domin- 

 ica). The experience of the two observers 

 seems to be so very difFereiit, that it would ap- 

 |)ear at first as though one or the other of them 

 nmst be wrong. But when we take into con- 

 sideration that they are both well practised 

 collectors, and also that there is a wide difier- 

 ciice ill the localities in which their observa- 

 tions are iiiadc, we must pause and seek for a 

 natural exphiiiation of the apparently conOict- 

 iiig l;icts which they record. 



Leiiving out of account the diff'erence of lo- 

 cality, it seems as though the habits of the bird 

 itself will almost explain away all these con- 

 llicling points. Pre-eminently a searcher for 

 his food, he is no less an adept at fly-catching 

 on the wing, and can also if occasion requires 

 it, do some pretty fair work at picking into the 

 bark and crevices after the manner of the Nut- 

 hatches and Tits. In fact, 1 remember once 

 seeing a pair of Vellow-throated Warblers 

 shower down so much hark and rotten chips 



from tiie partially decayed limb of an oak, that 

 I was quite suspicious that they were excavat- 

 ing, or at least enlarging a hollow in which to 

 build; and I do not think it would be a sur- 

 prising fact to find a nest in such a location. 



A general rule for all birds seems to be that 

 the greater their range of adaptability to ob- 

 \ tain subsistence, the greater is their range in 



[ nest architecture. This observation does not 



\ necessarily imply a wide geographical distri- 



bution, which would of itself explain much of 

 the local variation in nesting habits. But a 

 bird that inhabits the moss-shrouded swamps 

 of the sea coast, the open sunny pine barrens 

 of the back country, and even extends his 

 range into the hard wood forests of the foot 

 hills, must of necessity be well able to rear his 

 young in such widely difl'erent places as a 

 I bunch of hanging moss or an open nest placed 



against the trunk of a pine tree. 

 ; Q.&Q. XIII. Jnly. . l8S8 9 »lQ,()-/fi/ 



