Dr. Dayton Stoner (1932) says of its migration through the Oneida Lake region, N. Y.:
The Nashville warbler here seems to prefer coppices along the edges of woodland such as young aspen and maple and elm thickets and other small growth that springs up in cut-over and burned-over areas. In such situations I have found it singing persistently in late May and the first few days in June. This warbler and the chestnut-sided are often found together. However, it does not confine its activities to thickets, for it not infrequently visits woodlands of tall elm, maple, beech and other deciduous trees, as well as mixed forest and the vegetation in door-yards. The flowering currant is in full bloom at the time this bird reaches the height of its abundance and I have seen it visiting such shrubbery during the first part of May.
In Massachusetts in May, according to Forbush (1929), “among its favorite haunts are the bushy edges of woodlands, whether along roads, railroads or streams, or about ponds, lakes, marshes, swamps or open fields. It may often be found among willows, alders, birches or poplars. Old neglected fields and pastures, with scattered growths of birches and bushes, are favorite feeding grounds, but the bird also visits orchards, gardens and shade trees, even in city parks. It may be found on dry lands where scattered pitch pines grow, and on moist lands with rank shrubbery.”
W. E. Clyde Todd (1940) says of the migration in western Pennsylvania: "The Nashville Warbler appears during the flood tide of the warbler migration in both spring and fall and is sometimes inordinately abundant. * * *
“Almost every spring there is a day or two of decided movement, when the species is very common and on occasion exceedingly abundant. On May 3, 1901, I witnessed a remarkable flight at Beaver. That morning the woods everywhere were full of Nashville warblers, to the exclusion of almost all other kinds. I counted a dozen in one tree. They kept mostly in the treetops and were singing very little.”
These warblers are also sometimes abundant in Ohio, for Milton B. Trautman (1940) noted as many as 80 individuals on May 15, 1932, at Buckeye Lake.
Nesting.—The nesting haunts of the eastern Nashville warbler are quite varied, and habitats similar to some of those frequented on the spring migration seem to be suitable for breeding grounds. But the nest is always placed on the ground and generally is well hidden. Gerald Thayer wrote to Dr. Chapman (1907):
Birch Warbler would be a good name for this bird as it appears in the Monadnock region where it breeds abundantly. For here it is nowhere so common as in abandoned fields and mountain pastures half smothered by small gray birches. From the airy upper story of these low and often dense birch copses the Nashvilles sing; and among the club-mosses and ferns, and the hardhacks and other scrubby brushes at their bases and around their borders, the Nashvilles build their nests. But such is merely their most characteristic home. * * * Dark spruce woods they do not favor, nor big, mixed virgin timber; but even in these places, one is likely to find them wherever there is a little “oasis” of sunlight and smaller deciduous growth. They are fairly common among the scanty spruces, mountain ashes, and white birches of the rocky ridge of Mt. Monadnock, almost to the top—3,169 feet.
F. H. Kennard records in his notes two nests found near Lancaster, N.H. One was among some dead weeds on a mossy hummock in a pasture; the other was in a swamp, at the base of and under a clump of alders beside a path. Miss Cordelia J. Stanwood (1910), of Ellsworth, Maine, writes:
When a growth of evergreens—pine, fir, spruce and hemlock—is cut, it is succeeded by a growth of hard wood—gray, white and yellow birches, maple, poplar, beech, cherry and larch—and vice versa. As the woodland is cut in strips, there are always these growths in juxtaposition. Though the nest of the Nashville is always placed among the gray birches, the inevitable strip of evergreen woodland is near at hand, and a swale not far away.