Virginia: 19 records, May 26 to June 18; 14 records, May 27 to June 4 (Harris).
DENDROICA CAERULESCENS CAIRNSI Coues
CAIRNS’ WARBLER
Plate 31
HABITS
This local race of the black-throated blue warbler, breeding in the southern Alleghenies, was named by Dr. Elliott Coues (1897) in honor of its discoverer and original describer, John S. Cairns of Weaverville, N.C. Dr. Coues, at that time, mentioned only the characters of the male, but those of the female are fully as well, perhaps more satisfactorily, marked than those of the male. Ridgway (1902) describes both very well and concisely as follows:
“Similar to D. c. caerulescens, but adult male darker above, especially the pileum, which is not lighter blue than the back, the latter usually more or less spotted or clouded with black, sometimes chiefly black, the pileum sometimes streaked with black; adult female darker and duller olive above and less yellowish beneath, with the olive of flanks darker and more strongly contrasted with the pale olive-yellowish of abdomen.” In discussing its distribution, he was unable to define its breeding range with any degree of accuracy; and adds in a footnote: “On the whole, the form is not a very satisfactory one, one of the two characters on which it was based (smaller size) failing altogether (D. c. cairnsi averaging slightly larger, in fact, than D. c. caerulescens), and the other only partially so, since many specimens of D. c. cairnsi have little if any black on the back, while many of D. c. caerulescens have quite as much as the average amount shown in D. c. cairnsi.”
The 1931 A. O. U. Check-List gives the breeding range of cairnsi as from Maryland to Georgia, but no definite line can be drawn; birds from southern Pennsylvania and Maryland, and perhaps the Virginias, are variably intermediate in their characters, and specimens can be found that are referable to either one or the other form.