“Come here! come here! come here!
My Philip dear, come here! come here!
Philip, my dear! Philip, Philip, my dear!”
Poor mournful Mrs. Flycatcher,
With ample breast of dainty buff,
Now don’t you think you’ve called your mate,—
To say the very least—enough?
I’m sorry for you, plaintive one;
I would be glad to make him fly
From his long tarrying place to you,
If that would stop your weary cry.
Can’t you decide to give him up?
All over town you’ve called his name;
I heard you calling this week, last,
The week before you called the same.
Perhaps some boy with “twenty-two”
Has shot him for his sister’s hat.
Go! search the churches through and through;
If he’s not there, accuse the cat.
—Carrie B. Sanborn.
[Illustration: ]
THE TOWNSEND’S WARBLER.
(_Dendroica townsendi._)
Dr. Robert Ridgway, in the Ornithology of Illinois, uses the following
words in speaking of that family of birds called the American Warblers
(Mniotilidae), “No group of birds more deserves the epithet of pretty
than the Warblers; Tanagers are splendid; Humming-birds are refulgent;
other kinds are brilliant, gaudy or magnificent, but Warblers alone are
pretty in the proper and full sense of that term.”
As they are full of nervous activity, and are “eminently migratory
birds,” they seem to flit rather than fly through the United States as
they pass northward in the spring to their breeding places, and
southward in the fall to their winter homes among the luxuriant forests
and plantations of the tropics. All the species are purely American, and
as they fly from one extreme to the other of their migratory range they
remain but a few days in any intermediate locality. Time seems to be an
important matter with them. It would seem as if every moment of daylight
was used in the gathering of food and the night hours in continuing
their journey.
The American Warblers include more than one hundred species grouped in
about twenty genera. Of these species nearly three-fourths are
represented in North America at least as summer visitants, the remaining
species frequenting only the tropics. Though woodland birds they exhibit
many and widely separated modes of life, some of the species preferring
only aquatic regions, while others seek drier soils. Some make their
homes in shrubby places, while others are seldom found except in
forests. As their food is practically confined to insects, they frequent
our lawns and orchards during their migrations, when they fly in
companies which may include several species. Mr. Chapman, in his
Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, says, “Some species flit
actively from branch to branch, taking their prey from the more exposed
parts of the twigs and leaves; others are gleaners, and carefully
explore the under surfaces of leaves or crevices in the bark; while
several, like Flycatchers, capture a large part of their food on the
wing.”
The Townsend’s Warbler is a native of Western North America, especially
near the Pacific coast. Its range extends from Sitka on the north to
Central America on the south, where it appears during the winter. In its
migration it wanders as far east as Colorado. It breeds from the
southern border of the United States northward, nesting in regions of
cone-bearing trees. It is said that the nest of this Warbler is usually
placed at a considerable height, though at times as low as from five to
fifteen feet from the ground. The nest is built of strips of fibrous
bark, twigs, long grasses and wool, compactly woven together. This is
lined with hair, vegetable down and feathers.
The eggs are described as buffy white, speckled and spotted with reddish
brown and lilac-gray, about three-fifths of an inch in length by about
one-half of an inch in diameter.