WILSON’S WARBLER. 
169 
arrival of the little cheerful songsters in the wilds of Oregon 
about the first week of May, where these birds commonly take 
up their summer residence, and seem almost the counterpart of 
our brilliant and cheerful Yellow Birds {Sylvia CRStiva), tuning 
their lay to the same brief and lively ditty, like 'tsh 'ish 'tsh 
tshea, or something similar ; their call, however, is more brief 
and less loud. They were rather familiar and unsuspicious, kept 
in bushes more than trees, particularly in the thickets which 
bordered the Columbia, busily engaged collecting their insect 
fare, and only varying their employment by an occasional and 
earnest warble. By the 1 2th of May they were already feed- 
ing their full-fledged young, though I also found a nest on the 
1 6th of the same month, containing 4 eggs, and just commen- 
cing incubation. The nest was in the branch of a small service 
bush, laid very adroitly as to concealment upon an accidental 
mass of old moss {Usnea') that had fallen from a tree above. 
It was made chiefly of ground moss {Hypnuni), with a thick 
lining of dry, wiry, slender grass. The female, when ap- 
proached, went off slyly, running along the ground like a 
mouse. The eggs are very similar to those of the summer 
Yellow Bird, sprinkled with spots of pale olive brown, inclined 
to be disposed in a ring at the greater end, as observed by Mr. 
Audubon in a nest which he found in Labrador made in a 
dwarf fir, also made of moss and slender fir-twigs. 
Wilson’s Black Cap is a regular, though not common, summer 
resident of northern New England, breeding chiefly north of the 
United States. It is not uncommon in the Maritime Provinces, 
and fairly common as a migrant about Montreal, but is rarely seen 
in Ontario, though abundant in Ohio. 
