A spring male (52,283) from Washington is remarkable in having the adjoining series of feathers down the middle of the back with their inner webs broadly edged with yellow. In this respect it differs from all others that we have noticed.
Habits. The Yellow-crowned Wood Warbler is one of the most common species of this genus, as well as one of the most widely distributed. It is found, at different seasons, throughout the eastern part of the continent, as far west as the Great Plains, extending at the far north to the Pacific Ocean. It has been found in Greenland, three specimens having been taken within twenty years, and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and during the winter in the West India Islands, Mexico, and Central America. Specimens from Florida and Fort Steilacoom, Panama, Guatemala, and Jamaica, and from Fort Rae, Anderson River, and the Yukon, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, attest its wide distribution. In Jamaica, in the neighborhood of
Spanishtown, this species has been known to breed. In view of the fact that this bird is regarded, with good reason, as one of our most northern species, breeding to the very shores of the frozen seas, the occurrence seems erratic and remarkable. Yet it is not without corresponding vagaries in other species, the cærulescens breeding in Cuba and the tigrina in St. Domingo and Jamaica.
Mr. Paine, of East Randolph, Vt., states that these Warblers arrive in his vicinity about the first of May, and remain there nearly two weeks, and then all pass north. They do not return on their southern flight until the last of September, when they remain about three weeks. It is a very active, restless bird, chirping continually and very sharply as it flies around in search of insects, but has not, so far as he knows, any song.
In Southern Illinois, as Mr. Ridgway informs me, this bird is a common winter sojourner, remaining late in spring with the migratory species. It is very abundant throughout the winter in woods, orchards, and door-yards.
Mr. Salvin found this species frequenting the more open districts about Duenas, Guatemala, apparently preferring scattered bushes to the denser underwood, and was an abundant species there throughout the winter season.
It is but quite recently that we have known with certainty its place and manner of breeding. Neither Wilson, Nuttall, nor Audubon appear to have met with its nest, though the latter received one from Professor McCulloch of Halifax.
In the summer of 1855, early in July, I obtained a nest of this species in Parsboro’, Nova Scotia. It was built in a low bush, in the midst of a small village, and contained six eggs. The parents were very shy, and it was with great difficulty that one of them was secured for identification. Though late in the season, incubation had but just commenced.
The nest was built on a horizontal branch, the smaller twigs of which were so interlaced as to admit of its being built upon them, though their extremities were interwoven into its rim. The nest was small for the bird, being only two inches in depth and four and a half in diameter. The cavity is one and a half inches deep and two and a half wide. Its base and external portions consist of fine, light, dry stalks of wild grasses, and slender twigs and roots. Of the last the firm, strong rim of the nest is exclusively woven. Within, the nest is composed of soft, fine grasses, downy feathers, and the fine hair of the smaller mammals.
Mr. Audubon, who observed very closely the habits of these birds during a winter in Florida, describes them as very social among themselves, skipping along the piazza, balancing themselves in the air opposite the sides of the house in search of spiders and insects, diving through the low bushes of the garden after larvæ and worms, and at night roosting among the orange-trees. In his visit to Maine he found them very abundant in early May. The woods seemed alive with them, and wherever he landed, on his way to Labrador, he found them in great numbers.