BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER. 
231 
tively searching for small caterpillars and winged insects amidst 
the white blossoms of the shady apple-tree ; and so inoffensive 
and unsuspicious is the little warbler that he pursues without 
alarm his busy occupation, as the spectator within a few feet of 
him watches at the foot of the tree. Early in October these 
birds are seen in small numbers roving restlessly through the 
forest, preparatory to their departure for the South. 
Though the greater part of the species probably proceed 
farther north to rear their young, a few spend the summer in 
the Middle and Northern States ; but from their timorous and 
retiring habits it is not easy to trace out their retreats at the 
period of breeding. In the summer of 1830, however, on the 
8th of June, I was so fortunate as to find a nest of this species 
in a perfectly solitary situation on the Blue Hills of Milton. 
The female was now sitting, and about to hatch. The nest was 
in a low, thick, and stunted Virginia juniper. When I ap- 
proached near to the nest the female stood motionless on its 
edge and peeped down in such a manner that I imagined her 
to be a young bird. She then darted directly to the earth and 
ran ; but when, deceived, I sought her on the ground, she had 
very expertly disappeared, and I now found the nest to con- 
tain 4 roundish eggs, white, inclining to flesh-color, variegated, 
more particularly at the great end, with pale, purplish points 
of various sizes, interspersed with other large spots of brown 
and blackish. The nest was formed of circularly entwined 
fine strips of the inner bark of the juniper and the tough whtte 
fibrous bark of some other plant, then bedded with soft feath- 
ers of the Robin, and lined with a few horse-hairs and some 
slender tops of bent-grass (^Agrostis ) . The male was singing 
his simple chant at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the 
nest, and was now nearly in the same dark wood of tall oaks 
and white pines in which I had first heard him a fortnight be- 
fore. This simple, rather drawling, and somewhat plaintive 
song, uttered at short intervals, resembled the syllables ’te de 
tentsca, sometimes te derisca, pronounced pretty loud and 
slow, and the tones proceeded from high to low. In the inter- 
vals he was perpetually busied in catching small cynips and 
