30 
THE BLACK-POLL WOOD- WARBLER. 
follow the advance of the season, and I have not been able to comprehend 
why it is never seen in the maritime parts of South Carolina, while it is 
abundantly found in the State of New Jersey close to the sea-shore. There 
you would think it had changed its habits ; for, instead of skipping 
among the taller branches of trees, it is seen moving along the trunks and 
large limbs, almost in the manner of a Certhia, searching the chinks of the 
bark for larvae and pupae. They are met with in groups of ten, twelve, or 
more, in the end of April, but after that period few are to be seen. In 
Massachusetts they begin to appear nearly a month later, the intervening 
time being no doubt spent on their passage through New York and 
Connecticut. I found them at the end of May in the eastern part of Maine, 
and met with them wherever we landed on our voyage to Labrador, where 
they arrive from the 1st to the 10th of June, throwing themselves into every 
valley covered by those thickets, which they prefer for their breeding places. 
It also breeds abundantly in Newfoundland. 
In these countries it has almost become a Flycatcher. You see it darting 
in all directions after insects, chasing them on wing, and not unfrequently 
snapping so as to emit the clicking sound characteristic of the true Fly- 
catcher. Its activity is pleasing, but its notes have no title to be called a 
song. They are shrill, and resemble the noise made by striking two small 
pebbles together, more than any other sound that I know. They may be in 
some degree imitated by pronouncing the syllable sche , sche. sche, sche, sche, 
so as progressively to increase the emphasis. 
I found the young fully grown in the latter part of August, but with the 
head as in the females, and like them they obtain their full plumage during 
the next spring migration, after which these birds return southward. They 
raise only one brood in the season, and if any of them breed in the United 
States, it must be in the northern parts. They are seldom seen in autumn 
in the States, and very seldom during the summer months. 
The Black-poll Warbler is a gentle bird, by no means afraid of man, 
although it pursues some of its smaller enemies with considerable courage. 
The sight of a Canadian Jay excites it greatly, as that marauder often sucks 
its eggs, or swallows its young. In a few instances I have seen the Jay 
confounded by the temerity of its puny assailant. 
The occurrence of this species so far north in the breeding season, and the 
curious diversity of its habits in different parts of the vast extent of country 
which it traverses, are to me quite surprising, and lead me to add somo 
remarks on the migration of various species of Sylvia, which, like the 
present, seem to skip, as it were, over large portions of the country. 
In the course of my voyages to the south-eastern extremity of the Penin- 
sula of the Floridas, I frequently observed birds of many kinds flying either 
