DENDROICA OCCIDENTALIS (Townsend)
HERMIT WARBLER
Plate 39
HABITS
This well-marked wood warbler lives in summer in the high coniferous forests of the west, from British Columbia southward to the southern Sierra Nevadas in California, and spends the winter in Mexico and Central America. This is another of those species discovered by J. K. Townsend along the Columbia River, of which he wrote to Audubon (1841): “I shot this pair of birds near Fort Vancouver, on the 28th of May, 1835. I found them flitting among the pine trees in the depth of a forest. They were actively engaged in searching for insects, and were frequently seen hanging from the twigs like Titmice. Their note was uttered at distant intervals, and resembled very much that of the Black-throated Blue Warbler, Sylvia canadensis.”
In northwestern Washington the hermit warbler is not common and is decidedly local in its summer haunts, being regularly found in certain favored regions and entirely absent in other somewhat similar localities. It is partial to a certain type of coniferous forest, and when one learns to recognize the proper environment he is quite likely to find it. D. E. Drown and S. F. Rathbun showed me some typical haunts of this warbler near Tacoma, where J. H. Bowles has found it nesting. This is level land covered with a more or less open growth of firs and cedars, the largest trees, giant Douglas firs, are somewhat scattered and tower above the rest of the forest, some reaching a height of 200 feet or more. As the warblers spend most of their time in the tops of these great trees and are very active, it is difficult to identify them even with a good glass, and still more difficult to follow them to their nests.
Chester Barlow (1901) says that in the central Sierra Nevada, in California, “the hermit warbler is pre-eminently a frequenter of the conifers, although it feeds in the bushes and black oaks in common with other species.” In the Yosemite region, according to Grinnell and Storer (1924), “the Hermit Warbler is a bird of the coniferous forests at middle altitudes. Pines and firs afford it suitable forage range and safe nesting sites. The birds keep fairly well up in the trees, most often at 20 to 50 feet from the ground. The Hermit may thus be found in close association with the Audubon Warbler, although the latter ranges to a much greater altitude in the mountains.”
Spring.—Dr. Chapman (1907), outlining the migration of the hermit warbler, says that it “enters the United States in April being reported from Oracle, Arizona, April 12, 1899, and the Huachuca Mountains, Arizona, April 9, 1902. Records of the earliest birds seen in California are Campo, April 27, 1877, and Julian, April 25, 1884. A Hermit Warbler was noted at Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, April 20, 1885.” Swarth (1904) says that the first arrivals in the Huachucas “appeared in the very highest parts of the mountains, but a little later they could be found in all parts of the range, and on April 17, 1902, I saw a few in some willows near the San Pedro River.” Mrs. Amelia S. Allen’s notes from the San Francisco Bay region, give dates of arrival from April 24 to May 10. In northwestern Washington, according to Bowles (1906), “the hermits make their first appearance early in May and the fact is only to be known thru their notes; for they frequent the tops of the giant firs which cover large sections of our flat prairie country.”