In the Pensacola region of Florida, F. M. Weston (MS.) writes: “Birds that have wintered commence singing, and thus become conspicuous, early in March. Incoming migrants gradually add to the number until, by the first of April, the species is common and widely distributed in all areas where Spanish moss is present. Howell considers this species as one of the typical birds of the pine forests, but in this region, where the moss is never found in pure stands of pine, the bird is absent from the pine woods. In the Dead Lakes area, south of Marianna, Fla., a drowned cypress swamp, the cypresses are covered with dense masses of moss and the yellow-throated warbler is one of the characteristic birds.”
Arrival dates in Georgia are similar to those in South Carolina. Around Charleston, there are comparatively few birds in evidence from November until late February, though individuals may be seen throughout this period. The barrier islands, typified by Bull’s Island, seem to be favorite wintering localities. In late February the song period begins, coinciding with a distinct influx from the south, and soon the birds seem almost everywhere. Arthur T. Wayne (1910) puts the twenty-seventh of the month as the advent of the spring migration in Charleston. This coincides with all my observations, though some variation may occur when the spring is early or late.
In North Carolina the bird is much more common in the coast region than the interior, but does occur scatteringly in the middle portion of the state and sometimes considerably to the westward. It is absent in the mountains but a few may be noted in the valleys of the foothills. According to the findings of Pearson and the Brimleys (1942) it appears about Raleigh on March 9. Probably the coastal areas are visited earlier, perhaps by March 1. Uncertainty prevails regarding the arrival of birds in the western parts of the state. These authors quote T. D. Burleigh as stating that the earliest date near Asheville is March 28, 1935, and that “at no time were any seen on the mountainsides.”
In Virginia one finds this warbler appearing in the Tidewater area “as early as March 20th,” according to H. H. Bailey (1913). May T. Cooke (1929) states that it usually comes to the Washington region around April 15, the earliest record being March 30. Its summer status there is characterized as “local”; moist woodlands along the Potomac River are its favorite spots. Further inland, Ruskin H. Freer (MS.) says that he has seen it but twice at Lynchburg, on April 11, 1933, and September 30, 1930. Lynchburg, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, is probably a western limit.
Professor E. A. Smyth never saw it in Montgomery County and J. J. Murray (MS.) has not recorded it about Lexington in Rockbridge County (MS.), localities in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. According to Dr. Murray “the bird is unknown west of the Blue Ridge in Virginia. It is a migrant in the foothills and upper Piedmont on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. From Washington south through central Virginia it is an uncommon summer resident in the eastern third of the State, becoming more common as the coast is approached, but even in the tidewater region and on the Eastern Shore it is abundant only locally.”
My experience with this warbler in Virginia is limited to the southern portion of the Eastern Shore. There, in the area about Eastville, Cheriton, and Cape Charles during June and half of July 1940, I found it fairly numerous in the woodlands but discovered no nests. This locality appears to be the extreme northern limit of the Spanish moss for only a few bedraggled clumps were noted in the woods near Eastville on the Chesapeake Bay side of the peninsula. This moss ceases to be prevalent as one comes to the bay on the Norfolk side and the dejected evidences of the growth across that body of water suggest that it may have had its origin in wind-blown shreds that gained and maintain a precarious foothold.
Nesting.—It is in its domestic habits that dominica exhibits its unalterable affinity for Tillandsia usneoides where the ranges coincide. The nest is rarely placed anywhere except in a clump of it, and the tree concerned is usually an oak, as this species offers more foothold for the Spanish moss than others and, as a consequence, is more heavily draped. Although I have found nests both in pines and cypresses, there is little question but that the live oak holds them more often than any other tree. The long plantation avenues are splendid sites, and Arthur T. Wayne once told me that he had climbed every tree in the long approach to Oakland Plantation in Christ Church Parish near Charleston, for nests of this bird!
The height at which the nest is placed varies from 10 or 12 feet to 50 or 75, and in some cases to nearly 100. The lowest nest I ever found was in my yard (in 1943); it was built in a clump of moss in a cassina bush (Ilex vomitoria) barely 31⁄2 feet from the ground. However, the average height might be put at about 35 feet.
Nest building materials are not of wide choice, usually consisting of fine grasses, caterpillar silk, weed stems, and plant down, with a lining of plant down or sometimes feathers. The moss among which the nest is suspended is woven into the structure to some extent. Horsehair and skeletonized leaves are sometimes employed. The nest is fairly deeply cupped and averages about 3 inches in outside diameter, 21⁄2 in inside diameter, and the same in depth. The writer has never seen a nest not built in moss, but Wayne (1910) gives two other locations in coastal South Carolina, his only such in 50 years of field work. Both were in short-leaf pines, one 45 and the other 50 feet up, and both were hidden in masses of needles and burs, invisible from below. One of these nests is in the Brewster collection and the other in J. E. Thayer’s.
Dr. E. E. Murphey, writing of the bird in the Savannah River Valley of Georgia (1937), states that it prefers moss “whenever it is present” but adds, “contrary to the experience of Arthur T. Wayne in the coastal area, it breeds also in pine woods which at places come very close to the margins of the swamps * * * Here the Yellow-throated Warbler nests not uncommonly, building far out on the end of the horizontal limbs, well concealed by the needles.” He states that “two broods are usually reared.” W. H. LaPrade, Jr. (1922) describes the nesting in the Atlanta area as similar to that noted by Dr. Murphey about Augusta. In the coastal strip and the offshore islands conditions identical with those in South Carolina prevail.