WARBLERS: OVEN-BIRD 
625 
Food. —Mainly insects and a few spiders, including stink bugs, leaf hoppers, 
scales, wasps and ants, caterpillars, engraver weevils injurious to trees, and weevils 
which destroy the staminate blossoms of conifers (5 stomachs contained 271). 
General Habits. —In the alder thickets along Coyote Creek, in 
the fall migration, we saw a number of the handsome Townsend 
Warblers with the black throat patches of summer obscured by yellow 
feather tips, and the large black arrow points showing well on their 
olive-green backs. At other times we found them in aspens and spruces. 
On Mount Graham, in Arizona, in September, Mr. Henshaw says 
they were seen “almost invariably in the tops of the tallest trees, where 
a glimpse might now and then be had of them as they dashed out after 
flying insects, or flew* from tree to tree in their onward migratory 
course. The tracts of pine woods they shunned entirely, but affected 
the firs and spruces, and their flights from point to point were regulated 
and made longer or shorter by the presence or absence of these trees. 
Their movements were exceedingly rapid; a moment spent in passing 
in and out of the interlacing branches, a few hurried sweeps at extrem¬ 
ities and they were off to the next adjoining tree to repeat the process 
again and again till lost sight of in the dense woods. Their only note 
was the common tsip” (1875, p. 200). On their breeding grounds in 
Montana, where they frequent the large tamaracks and Douglas 
spruce, their song is given by Mr. Silloway as “reet, reet , reet, reeter- 
ee-zee” (1904, p. 12). 
Additional Literature.—Bowles, J. H., Condor, X, 193, 1908.— Bowles, 
J. H., and F. R. Decker, Educational Leaflet 119, Nat. Assoc. Audubon Soc.— 
Silloway, P. M., Condor, VIII, 109-110, 1906. 
[OVEN-BIRD: Seiurus aurocapfllus (Linnaeus) 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 5-5.6 inches, wing 2.7-3.1, tail 2.1-2.3, 
bill .4-.5, tarsus .8-.9. Female the same size. Crown with orange-brown patch 
between blackish stripes; back, wings, and tail, plain dull olive-green; underparts 
white , breast and sides heavily streaked with blackish. Young in juvenal plumage: 
Upperparts bright cinnamon-brown, narrowly streaked with black, breast and sides 
lighter brown faintly streaked with black, belly white; wings and tail as in adult 
but wing-coverts black, tipped with rusty. 
Range. —Breeds in Canadian, Transition, and Upper Austral Zones from south¬ 
western Mackenzie (casually Lower Yukon Valley), northern Ontario, Quebec, and 
Labrador south to Virginia (in mountains to Georgia and South Carolina), southern 
Missouri, Kansas (casually Colorado, rarely southeastern Montana), and central 
Alberta; winters from central Florida (casually South Carolina), and islands on 
Louisiana coast, Bahamas, West Indies, and western Mexico. Recorded from 
northern South America. Casual in California. 
State Records. —The Oven-Bird is casual in Colorado and winters in Mexico, 
so that a few should cross New Mexico in migration; but as yet there is no sure record 
of its occurrence in the State. The specimen taken May 16, 1892, at Mosquito 
