ABOUT sixty species of Warblers are known to ornithologists, no one of
which can be considered a great singer, but their several twitterings have
a small family resemblance. The Bay-breasted, which is also popularly
called Autumnal Warbler, breeds from northern New England and northern
Michigan northward, its nest being found in low, swampy woods, where there
is a mixture of evergreens, oak, birch, elm and other trees. It is compact,
cup-shaped, and usually placed in coniferous trees from five to fifteen or
even twenty feet above the ground. Fine shreds of bark, small twigs,
fibrous roots, and pine hair are used in its construction. Four eggs are
laid, which are white, with a bluish tinge, finely speckled on or round the
larger end with reddish-brown.
Comparatively little is known of the habits of this species. It passes in
spring and fall, on its way to the north, being sometimes abundant at both
seasons, but does not tarry long. In general habits, at all times, it
closely resembles other species of the genus. In Oxford County, Maine, says
Mr. Maynard, these birds are found in all the wooded sections of that
region, where they frequent the tops of tall trees. The species seems to be
confined during the building season to the region just north of the White
Mountains range.
Ridgway says: "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. When the apple trees bloom, the
Warblers revel among the flowers, vieing in activity and in number with the
bees; now probing the recesses of a blossom for an insect which has
effected lodgment there, then darting to another, where, poised daintily
upon a slender twig, or suspended from it, he explores hastily but
carefully for another morsel. Every movement is the personification of
nervous activity, as if the time for their journey was short; and, indeed,
such appears to be the case, for two or three days at most suffice some
species in a single locality; a day spent in gleaning through the woods and
orchards of one neighborhood, with occasional brief siestas among the leafy
bowers, then the following night in continuous flight toward its northern
destination, is probably the history of every individual of the moving
throng."
"Have you walked beneath the blossoms in the spring?
In the spring?
Beneath the apple blossoms in the spring?
When the pink cascades are falling,
And the silver brooklets bawling,
And the Warbler bird soft calling,
In the spring?"
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