New Brunswick: 59 records, June 7 to 28; 37 records, June 13 to 19.
New York: 23 records, June 3 to July 1; 13 records, June 5 to 12.
Pennsylvania: 41 records, May 28 to June 13; 32 records, May 30 to June 8 (Harris).
CAPE MAY WARBLER
Plate 29
HABITS
This is the bird that made Cape May famous. Dr. Stone (1937) suggests that it has “served to advertise the name of Cape May probably more widely than has been done in any other way.” The inappropriate name Cape May warbler was given to it by Alexander Wilson (1831), who described and figured it from a specimen of an adult male taken by his friend, George Ord, in a maple swamp in Cape May County, N. J., in May, 1811. He never saw it in life and never obtained another specimen. Audubon never saw it in life, the specimens figured by him having been obtained by Edward Harris near Philadelphia. Nuttall apparently never saw it.
Dr. Stone (1937) writes: “Curiously enough it seems never to have been recorded again at Cape May until September 4, 1920, when I recognized one in a shade tree on Perry Street in company with some Chestnut-sided Warblers. Since then we have seen a few nearly every year in spring and fall both at Cape May and at the Point.” It is perhaps not to be wondered at that the early ornithologists knew so little about it before 1860, for bird observers were few and widely scattered in those days, and the Cape May warbler is only a hurried migrant through the United States over a very wide immigration range, nowhere very abundant, and its numbers seem to fluctuate from year to year.