ONE of the most interesting facts concerning this beautiful warbler is that, though not common, it is a winter sojourner, and therefore of perpetual interest to the student of birds. About the last of March, however, multitudes of them may be seen as they begin to move northward. By the middle of April all but a few stragglers have left us, and it is not till the last of September that they begin to return, the majority of them arriving about the middle of October. The habitat of the myrtle warbler includes the whole of North America, though it is chiefly found east of the Rocky Mountains, breeding from the northern United States northward into the Arctic regions; and, what is regarded as strange for so hardy a bird, has been found nesting in Jamaica. Its winter home is from about latitude 40° south into southern Central America.

The adult female myrtle warbler is similar to the male, but much duller in color. In winter the plumage of the sexes is said to be essentially alike. The upper parts are strongly washed with umber brown, and lower parts more or less suffused with paler wash of the same. The young have no yellow anywhere, except sometimes on the rump. The whole plumage is thickly streaked above and below with dusky and grayish white.

The places to study these attractive warblers are the open woods and borders of streams. In their northern winter homes, during the winter months, spiders, eggs and larvÆ of insects constitute their principal food, though they also feed upon the berries of the poison ivy, and in the early spring, as they move northward, upon "insects that gather about the unfolding leaves, buds, and blossoms." Col. Goss says that in the spring of 1880 he found the birds in large numbers on Brier Island and other places in Nova Scotia, feeding along the beach, in company with the horned lark, upon the small flies and other insects that swarm about the kelp and debris washed upon the shore. "They utter almost continually, as they flit about, a tweet note, the males often flying to the tops of the small hemlocks to give vent to their happiness in song, which is quite loud for warblers—rather short, but soft and pleasing."

These birds usually build their nests in low trees and bushes, but Mr. MacFarlane, who found them nesting at Anderson River, says they occasionally nest on the ground. Mr. Bremer says that in the summer of 1855, early in July, he obtained a nest of the myrtle warbler in Parsborough, Nova Scotia. It was built in a low bush, in the midst of a small village, and contained six eggs. The parents were very shy, and it was with great difficulty that one of them was secured for identification. The nest was built on a horizontal branch, the smaller twigs of which were so interlaced as to admit of being built upon them, though their extremities were interwoven into its rim. The nest was small for the bird, being only two inches in depth and four and a half in diameter. The cavity was one and one-half inches deep and two and a half wide. Its base and external portions consisted of fine, light dry stalks of wild grasses, and slender twigs and roots. Of the last the firm, strong rim of the nest was exclusively woven. Within the nest were soft, fine grasses, downy feathers, and the fine hair of small animals.

The eggs are three to six, white to greenish white, spotted and blotched, with varying shades of umber brown to blackish and pale lilac: in form they are rounded oval.

In autumn, when the myrtle warblers return from Canada, they mostly haunt the regions where the juniper and bayberries are abundant. The latter (Myrica cerifera), or myrtle waxberries, as they are frequently called, and which are the favorite food of this species, have given it their name. These warblers are so restless that great difficulty is experienced in identifying them.