92 
BIRDS OF DURHAM AND VICINITY. 
chilly morning in December, so far north. The sound came from a 
patch of rank weeds, where a number of Song and Tree Sparrows 
were gleaning a breakfast. I investigated, and sure enough, there 
was a Yellow-throat chumming with the sparrows, though what he 
found to eat, I do not know. On New Year's day the weather became 
decidedly cold. Three inches of snow fell during the day, the ground 
had previously been bare, and the thermometer went down to four 
degrees above zero, Fahrenheit, that night. The morning of the second, 
brought rigorous weather. A gale from the north was so severe that three 
schooners went ashore in the harbor, and the mercury was still near 
the zero mark. I went in search of the colony of birds I had been 
watching from day to day. The sparrows were in the lee of the sand- 
hills unconcernedly getting breakfast, but what of their warbler com- 
panion? I found him at last, at the top of a bluff, focing the east and 
overlooking Cape Cod Bay. A bleaker scene would be hard to find; 
yet here, on a few inches of bare frozen earth, sheltered by some dead 
grass that was still standing, was our pilgrim. Probably for the first 
time in his life he was silent when there was a man in sight. He 
was evidently very cold, but he hopped about in a determined way, 
as if he meant to stick it out till spring, come what would, and I pre- 
sume he did so, for the snow was gone in a day or two under the 
influence of ocean air, and there was not another bit of weather like 
that all winter. 
Wilsonia pusilla. Wilson's Warbler. 685. 
Wilson's Warl^ler, or Wilson's Black-cap, is one of the less common 
migrants that traverse this section, semi-annually. They frequent 
alders, willows, and other trees which grow in wet places. I have 
usually observed them along the course of the brook between Thomp- 
son hall and the mill-pond. I have seen them for the first time, two 
different years, on May 13. The first arrivals that I have seen have 
been males, the females coming somewhat later, at least as late as the 
twenty-ninth of May, on which date I have observed one. I have 
never noted their fall passage. The stomach of a specimen taken 
late in May contained remains of a spider and various insects, among 
which I could recognize characteristics enough to identify a lampyrid 
beetle, a small neuropter, and the dipterous families : Muscidcv, Psy- 
chodidce, and CecidoniyiidcE. 
