There are certain areas of woodland which the birdlover learns to associate with some particular species. On our hill there is a ruf overgrown field which half a century ago was cultivated land. This half acre gives on a little brook and whenever my footsteps tend that way I look, almost subconsciously, if the season be right, for one of these deliberate, slow-moving, lovers-of-loneliness, and my expectations seldom are disappointed. During May and June two (sometimes more) males can be seen around this spot.
Most of our bird life is concentrated in the valley and half a mile back on the Taconic Hills avian life is extremely rare.
BLACKTHROAT BLUE WARBLERS are among the few feathered forms which frequent these lonesome fastnesses and the cheerful, strong notes of their four or five different songs come to the listener's ear with singular sweetness.
Here, one day in the first part of June, I flushed a female from her nest in a clump of blackberry canes within a foot of the ground. She wasn't very much excited but her subdued alarm notes soon brought the Captain to see what it was all about. They both discust me for a few minutes and then crost the little brook, traveled up into the tips of the white birches and had lunch.
NEST: Unusually large for the size of the bird: generally composed of grapevine bark and bits of decayed wood and lined with small dark rootlets and hair. Rather loosely put together exteriorly but efficiently finished within.
EGGS: Three or four: buffy to light greenish white, spotted with varying shades of brown and lavender.
Eastern North America. From northern Minnesota, central Ontario and northeastern Quebec, south to southern Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and northern Connecticut.
A doubtful subspecies relegated to the Canadian and Transition Zones, in southern Alleghenies from Maryland to Georgia!
A small 30-foot tree, distributed in rich soil on stream borders from Virginia to northern Florida, westward to edge of the Great Plains.