BACHMAN’S WARBLER
Contributed by Edward von Siebold Dingle
HABITS
Bachman’s warbler was discovered by Dr. John Bachman a few miles from Charleston, S. C., in July, 1833. According to Audubon (1841), who described and named in honor of his “amiable friend” the only two specimens taken, several other birds were seen soon after in the same locality.
More than half a century passed before the bird again appeared in America, this time in Louisiana. Charles S. Galbraith (1888), while securing specimens of warblers at Lake Pontchartrain for the millinery trade in the spring of 1886, took a single bird; in the two succeeding years he collected a number of additional specimens, 6 in 1887 and 31 in 1888. These birds were evidently migrating, for the 31 were all taken between March 2 and 20, and none could be found after the end of March. Chapman (1907) comments on Galbraith’s first specimen: “This specimen, now in the American Museum of Natural History, is prepared for a hat-piece. The feet are missing, the wings are stiffly distended, the head bent backward in typical bonnet pose, and, had it not been for an interest in ornithology which led Galbraith to take his unknown birds to Mr. Lawrence for identification, this rara avis might have become an unappreciated victim on Fashion’s altar.”
Since then the records have multiplied; but bachmanii has always been an extremely local species, even in migrations, and breeds in primeval swamps in small colonies, which are few and far between. At the present writing, the bird is one of the very rarest of North American warblers. It has been an unattained ideal to the writer; yet, having heard much about its habits from the late Arthur T. Wayne and having visited with him the former breeding grounds, he has some consolation for not having met it in life.
Wayne (1901) took a specimen of this species on May 15, 1901, near Mount Pleasant, which was the first record for South Carolina since Dr. Bachman collected the type, and says: “I am positive that I have heard this song nearly every summer in the same localities where the male was found, but I always keep out of such places after April 10 on account of the myriads of ticks and red bugs which infest them. Then, too, such places are simply impenetrable on account of the dense blackberry vines, matted with grape vines, fallen logs piled one upon another, and a dense growth of low bushes.”
Spring.—From its winter home in Cuba Bachman’s warbler enters the United States through Florida, and according to Howell (1932) the earliest date of arrival in that state is February 27. It has also been recorded from Louisiana on the same date (Chapman, 1907). The majority of individuals, however, cross to the United States mainland early in March; apparently the birds that summer in Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky reach their breeding grounds by skirting the Gulf coast and continuing up the Mississippi Valley. They reach the vicinity of Charleston, S. C., in March and nesting begins at once, for Wayne (1907) found a nest on March 27 containing one egg and another on April 3 with five well-incubated eggs. He calls attention to the fact that Bachman’s warbler therefore breeds earlier than the resident pine and yellow-throated warblers.