AABOUT 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."