BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER. 
377 
lessly employed, he sometimes encounters the capricious 
malice of the larger birds, and the cowardly Chipping 
Sparrow, although itself a pigmy, sometimes insultingly 
chases this little stranger from his silent retreat and 
necessary employment. Early in October they 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 pro- 
ceed 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. Last sum- 
mer (1830), however, on the 8th of June, I was so for- 
tunate as to find a nest of this species in a perfectly soli- 
tary 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 contain 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 black- 
ish. The nest was formed of circularly entwined fine 
strips of the inner bark of the juniper, and the tough 
white fibrous bark of some other plant, then bedded with 
soft feathers 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 
32* 
