"Very pleasant in my garden. May 1832." — This sentence in pencil was written by my father in a copy of Nuttall's Ornithology. In those days this was considered one of the rarest of the Warblers but I could repeat the remark nearly every year since I have lived here in the Taconic Hills, for CHESTNUTSIDES are among the commonest and tamest of the birds frequenting this vicinity. A pair has built for three years in succession in a patch of wild raspberry bushes within a few feet of the front porch. They are members of the School of Philosophy which successfully teaches how to be happy and I am sure that all major in this study. They have a self-contained air of content and are far less restless than most members of the family.
NEST: A rough cup of coarse grasses, bark strips, plant down, tied with spiderweb and lined with fine roots, grasses and horsehair. Located in low bushes, usually within three feet of the ground.
EGGS: Three to five: white to creamy spotted with chestnut, pale purple and various shades of brown, usually forming a narrow heavy wreath at large end.
Eastern North America, north to Newfoundland, central Ontario and northwestern Manitoba: west to the Great Plains.
This subspecies is distributed from southern New Jersey to southern Florida and on the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas.