The Chestnut-sided Warbler 
339 
of listeners with that of the Yellow Warbler. Mathews says the song 
resembles the words: “I wish, I wish, I wish to see Miss Beecher.” 
All birds that depend so much on insects for their livelihood as do the 
Chestnut-sided Warblers are necessarily highly migratory. By the middle 
of September nearly all of them have departed from their summer home, 
which covers the territory of the southern Canadian Provinces from Sas- 
katchewan eastward, and extends southward as far as 
Ohio and New Jersey. They are also found in sum- Migration 
mer along the Alleghany Mountains in Tennessee 
and the Carolinas. Most of the migrants go to Central America by 
way of the Gulf of Mexico, only a comparatively small number travel- 
ing to Florida and the Bahama Islands. 
Mr. Clinton G. Abbott, writing in Bird-Lore in 1909, told most enter- 
tainingly of the fortunes of a pair of these Warblers and their nest, which 
he watched one summer. After describing discovering a nest from 
which all the eggs had been thrown but one, and in their place had been 
deposited an egg of the Cowbird, he says : 
‘Tt was sometime during the night of July 13-14 that the first of the 
remaining two eggs hatched — the Cowbird’s of course. The Warbler’s 
hatched between twelve and twelve-thirty on the fourteenth. The nicety 
with which matters had been so arranged that the young Cowbird would 
have just a convenient start in life over its unfortu- 
nate rival commanded my admiration if not my 
sympathy. Cowbirds must indeed be sharp nest- 
finders to be able to discover at short notice not only the nests of certain 
suitable kinds of birds, but even nests containing eggs at a certain stage 
of incubation. 
“After the hatching of the eggs I spent considerable time at the nest- 
side, and observed with interest the many pretty little incidents of a bird’s 
domestic life — the constant and tender brooding of the newly hatched 
young by both Warblers in turn ; the never-ceasing search among the 
neighboring trees and bushes for small caterpillars ; the delivery of the 
food by the male to the brooding female, who in turn would raise herself 
and pass it to the young; the careful cleansing of the nest ; and many other 
intimate details of the birds’ loving and happy lives. When I drew aside 
the leaves that sheltered the nest, and allowed the sun 
to shine upon it for purposes of photography, the 
mother, realizing with that wonderful instinct com- 
mon to all birds which nest in the shade, the fatal effect on her babies 
of the sun’s direct rays, would take her stand on the edge of the nest 
and with outstretched wings would form of her own body a living shield 
for the comfort and protection of her young. 
“As the young birds began to grow, the Cowbird not only maintained, 
but rapidly increased its lead over its small nest-mate. At ever visit 
of the parent bird with food, its capacious gullet could be seen violently 
An Unbidden 
Guest 
Motherly 
Care 
