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The bay-breasted warbler was reported in the evergreens up by the stone house, but he failed to report to me here at "The Nest." The female redstart, however, came several times to the gravel walk below me, evidently looking for material to begin her nest.
The glories of our May bird life are the wood warblers, and innumerable they must seem to one who is just beginning his studies; indeed, there are over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage the blue-winged yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black poll.
It was pleasant to find here two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual glimpses, the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The mourning warbler's song, as I heard it, was like this: Whit whit whit, wit wit. The first three notes were deliberate and loud, on one key, and without accent.
We have no difficulty in distinguishing between adult bay-breasted and black poll warblers, but he is indeed a keen observer who can point out which is which when the young birds of the year pass. October is apt to be a month of extremes. One day the woods are filled with scores of birds, and on the next hardly one will be seen.
Some varieties, as the blue yellow-back, the chestnut-sided, and the Blackburnian, during their brief stay, sing nearly as freely as in their breeding-haunts. For two or three years I have chanced to meet little companies of the bay-breasted warbler, searching for food in an oak wood on an elevated piece of ground.
Rare warblers, as the black-poll, the yellow-poll, and the bay-breasted, pausing in May on their northward journey, pursue their insect game in the very heart of the town. I have heard the veery thrush in the trees near the White House; and one rainy April morning, about six o'clock, he came and blew his soft, mellow flute in a pear-tree in my garden.
Meantime, we kept on up the hill, and soon were in the old forest, listening to bay-breasted warblers, Blackburnians, black-polls, and so on, while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a better singer than any of them, was never out of our ears. "You are going up," it said. "I wish you joy. But you see how it is; you will soon have to come down again."
You may hear it continually in the higher spruce forests of the White Mountains; but you will look a good many times before you discover its author, and not improbably will begin by taking it for the call of the kinglet. The music of the bay-breasted warbler is similar to the black-poll's, but hardly so weak and formless.
Warblers, named for the magnolia and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter and creep along the branches with simple lisping music. Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs.
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