Sylvia ruficapilla, Wils. Am. Orn. III, 1811, 120, pl. xxvii, fig. 3.—Aud. Orn. Biog. I, 1832, 450, pl. lxxxix. Helminthophaga ruficapilla, Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 256; Rev. 175.—Sclater, P. Z. S. 1859, 373 (Xalapa).—Dresser, Ibis, 65, 477 (Texas).—Cooper, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 82. Sylvia rubricapilla, Wils. Am. Orn. VI, 1812, 15, General Index.—Nutt., Bon. Sylvicola rub. Rich. Vermivora rub. Bon.—Reinhardt, Vid. Med. for 1853, 1854, 82 (Greenland).—Brewer, Pr. Bost. Soc. N. H. VI, 1856, 4 (nest and eggs). Helinaia rub. Aud. Birds Am. II, pl. cxiii. Helmitherus rub. Bon.—Scl. P. Z. S. 1856, 291 (Cordova); 1859, 363 (Xalapa). Helminthophaga rub. Cab.—Sclater, P. Z. S. 1858, 298 (Oaxaca; Feb. and Aug.). Mniotilta rub. Reinhardt, Ibis, 1861, 6 (Greenland). Sylvia leucogastra, Shaw, Gen. Zoöl. X, II, 1817, 622. “Sylvia nashvillei,” Vieillot.—Gray. Sylvia mexicana, Holböll.
Sp. Char. Head and neck above and on sides ash-gray, the crown with a patch of concealed dark brownish-orange hidden by ashy tips to the feathers. Upper parts olive-green, brightest on the rump. Under parts generally, with the edge of the wing, deep
yellow; the anal region paler; the sides tinged with olive. A broad yellowish-white ring round the eye; the lores yellowish; no superciliary stripe. The inner edges of the tail-feathers margined with dull white. Female similar, but duller; the under parts paler, and with more white; but little trace of the red of the crown. Length, 4.65; wing, 2.42; tail, 2.05.
Hab. Eastern Province of North America; rare in the Middle Province (Fort Tejon, Cal., and East Humboldt Mountains, Nev.); Greenland (Reinhardt); Oaxaca (February and August, Sclater); Xalapa and Cordova (Sclater); Orizaba (winter, Sumichrast). Not recorded from West Indies.
It is an interesting fact, that, in this species, we find in the yellow a tendency to become more and more restricted as we pass westward. In adult spring males from the Atlantic States this color invades the cheeks, and even stains the lores and eyelids. In two adult spring males from Chicago it is confined within the maxillæ, the cheeks being clear ash, and the loral streak and orbital ring pure white; while in an adult male (autumnal, however) from the East Humboldt Mountains (Nevada, No. 53,354, U. S. Geol. Expl., 40th par.) the yellow is restricted to a medial strip, even the sides of the throat being ashy; the ash invades the back too, almost to the rump, while in Eastern specimens it extends no farther back than the nape. A male (No. 10,656, J. Xantus) from Fort Tejon, Cal., is much like the Nevada specimen, though the peculiar features of the remote Western form are less exaggerated; it is about intermediate between the other specimen and the specimens from Chicago. As there is not, unfortunately, a sufficiently large series of these birds before us, we cannot say to what extent these variations with longitude are constant.
Habits. The Nashville Warbler appears to be a species of somewhat irregular occurrence; at one time it will be rather abundant, though never very numerous, and at another time comparatively rare. For a long while our older naturalists regarded it as a very rare species, and knew nothing as to its habits or distribution. Wilson, who first met with it in 1811, never found more than three specimens, which he procured near Nashville, Tenn. Audubon only met with three or four, and these he obtained in Louisiana and Kentucky. These and a few others in Titian Peale’s collection, supposed to have been obtained in Pennsylvania, were all he ever saw. Mr. Nuttall at first regarded it as very rare, and as a Southern species. In that writer’s later edition he speaks of it as a bird having a Northern distribution as far as Labrador. Dr. Richardson records the occurrence of a single straggler in the fur country. So far as known, it occurs as a migrant in all the States east of the Missouri, and is a summer resident north of the 40th parallel. It probably breeds in the high ground of Pennsylvania, though this fact is inferred rather than known. It breeds in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and in Maine in the vicinity of Calais, being more abundant there than anywhere else, as far as has been ascertained.
Two individuals of this species have been taken in Greenland: one at Godthaab, in 1835; and the other at Fiskenæsset, August 31, 1840.
In Massachusetts it has so far been found in only a few restricted localities, Andover, Lynn, and Hudson, though it undoubtedly occurs elsewhere. About the time Wilson obtained his first specimen, a living bird of this species flew into the parlor of the late Colonel Thomas H. Perkins of Brookline, and is now in the collection of his grandson, Dr. Cabot. The latter gentleman states that when he first began making collections this Warbler was a very rare visitant to his neighborhood, but has of late become much more common, though varying greatly in this respect in different seasons. Specimens have been obtained in Western Iowa by Mr. H. W. Parker, of Grinnell.
A few instances of its occurrence west of the Mississippi Valley are known. One of these was by Xantus near Fort Tejon; another near Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada, by Mr. Gruber; and in the East Humboldt Mountains, Nevada, by Mr. Ridgway. Specimens of this Warbler were obtained in the winter by M. Boucard at Oaxaca, Mexico.
In the summer of 1854, Mr. Charles S. Paine found it breeding in Randolph, Vt., but was unable to discover the nest. “They spend the summer,” he wrote, “among low bushes, and probably build their nests among the thickets. I have watched their movements on several occasions. Once I detected an old bird with food in her bill about to feed her young. I could hear the young birds, yet was unable to find the nest.” Two years later, Mr. George O. Welch, of Lynn, found the nest of this Warbler on the ground in a small thicket. It contained young partially fledged, and one egg unhatched. The nest was built in a slight depression, in a dry place, among fallen leaves and in the shelter of a thicket of young oak-trees. This egg in shape was of a rounded oval, and measured .59 by .50 of an inch; one end was slightly more pointed than the other. The ground-color was white, slightly tinged with pink, and marked over the entire surface with purplish-brown dots. Around the larger end these spots form a beautiful wreath of confluent markings. Since then other nests have been found in the same locality, all on the ground and built in like situations. They have a diameter of four and a height of two inches. The cavity has a diameter of two and a depth of one and a quarter inches. The outer portions are built of dry mosses, intermingled with strips of the bark of the wild grape and the red cedar and a few herbaceous twigs, and lined with a thick layer of dried carices, small leaves of the white pine, and fine grasses. The whole structure is loosely put together. The nests are generally concealed by overarching leaves, which, however, form no part of the nest itself.