100 



PINE-SWAMP WARBLER. 

 SYLVIA PUSILLA. 

 [Plate XLIIL— Fig. 4.] 



THIS little bird is for the first time figured or described. Its . 

 favorite haunts are in the deepest and gloomiest pine and hemlock 

 swamps of our mountainous regions, where every tree, trunk, and 

 fallen log is covered with a luxuriant coat of moss, that even man- 

 tles over the surface of the ground, and prevents the sportsman 

 from avoiding a thousand holes, springs and swamps, into which 

 he is incessantly plunged. Of the nest of this bird I am unable to 

 speak. I found it associated with the Blackburnian Warbler, the 

 Golden-crested Wren, Ruby-crowned Wren, Yellow Rump, and 

 others of that description, in such places as I have described, about 

 the middle of May. It seemed as active in flycatching as in search- 

 ing for other insects, darting nimbly about among the branches, 

 and flirting its wings; but I could not perceive that it had either 

 note or song. I shot three, one male and two females. I have no 

 doubt that they breed in those solitary swamps, as well as many 

 other of their associates. 



The Pine-swamp Warbler is four inches and a quarter long, 

 and seven inches and a quarter in extent; bill black, not notched, 

 but furnished with bristles ; upper parts a deep green olive, with 

 slight bluish reflections, particularly on the edges of the tail and 

 on the head; wings dusky, but so broadly edged with olive green 

 as to appear wholly of that tint; immediately below the primary 

 coverts there is a single triangular spot of yellowish white ; no 

 other part of the wings is white ; the three exterior tail feathers 

 with a spot of white on their inner vanes ; the tail is slightly fork- 

 ed ; from the nostrils over the eye extends a fine line of white, and 



