Connecticut Warbler

The Connecticut Warbler has greenish upperparts, a gray head, throat, and breast, a white eye ring, and pale yellow belly.

Males have grayer heads than females.  Length: 6 in.  Wingspan: 9 in.

Photograph © Glenn Bartley.

Visit the Bent Life History page for additional information.

Females have greener heads than males.

Fall birds have greener heads.

Fall immatures have little or no gray on the head.

Connecticut Warblers inhabit spruce or tamarack bogs, though in migration they can be found in undergrowth near water.

Connecticut Warblers eat insects.

Connecticut Warblers forage on the ground among leaf litter.

Connecticut Warblers breed across much of southern Canada. They occur as a migrant across parts of the eastern U.S. They winter in Central America and South America.

More information:

Bent Life History

Visit the Bent Life History for extensive additional information on the Connecticut Warbler.

The Connecticut Warbler is one of the most difficult of warblers for most birders to see due to its shy habits and preferred undergrowth habitat.

If flushed, Connecticut Warblers often sit still on a branch for some time in the manner of thrushes.

The song is a series of rapid, four-note phrases.  A buzzy flight call is also given.

The Connecticut Warbler’s nest is a cup of leaves, grasses, and bark shreds and is lined with finer materials. It is placed on or near the ground in a mass of moss or a grass clump.

Number: Usually lay 4-5 eggs.
Color: Whitish with darker markings.

Incubation and fledging:
No information is available regarding incubation and fledging.

Published by the Smithsonian Institution between the 1920s and the 1950s, the Bent life history series of monographs provide an often colorful description of the birds of North America. Arthur Cleveland Bent was the lead author for the series. The Bent series is a great resource and often includes quotes from early American Ornithologists, including Audubon, Townsend, Wilson, Sutton and many others.

Bent Life History for the Connecticut Warbler – the common name and sub-species reflect the nomenclature in use at the time the description was written.

Wilson (1822) discovered this interesting warbler in Connecticut, described it, and named it for the State in which he first found it. He gave it the specific name agili&, because it “seemed more than commonly active, not remaining for a moment in the same position.” Both names now seem inappropriate, for Connecticut is far from either its breeding range or its winter home; furthermore, recent studies of its habits show that it is not necessarily “more than commonly active”, as it often remains perched for considerable periods.

Not much was known about it by either Wilson or Audubon, who regarded it as a very rare bird. For some 70 years after its discovery, nothing was known about its breeding range and nesting habits, until Ernest T. Seton (1884) found the first nest in 1883 in Manitoba. And for some years thereafter its home life and migrations remained clouded in mystery, but its life history and its ranges are now fairly well known. It is now known to breed in the Canadian Zone from central Alberta and southern Manitoba to central Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, perhaps northern Michigan, and southern Ontario; it spends the winter in South America, from Venezuela to southeastern Brazil, and perhaps in Colombia.

The locality in which Seton (1884) found it breeding is thus described by him: “A few miles south of Carberry, Manitoba, is a large sprnce bush, and in the middle of it is a wide tamarack swamp. This latter is a gray mossy bog, luxuriant only with pitcher plants and Drosera~. At regular distances, as though planted by the hand of man, grow tbe slim straight tai~iaracks, grizzled with moss, but not. dense, nor at all crowded; their light leafage casts no shade.”

In Alberta the Connecticut warbler seems to prefer the small, dry, well-drained ridges, or the vicinity of poplar woods, at least such were haunts in which Richard C. Harlow and A. D. Henderson found their nests. The latter tells me that this was formerly a quite common breeding bird around Belvedere, but that now it is extremely rare. The general locality where they found it breeding “was one of small prairies, a few acres in extent, scattered through groves of poplars. I have also heard the call of the Connecticut warbler many times in poplar woods, in the Fort Assiniboine District, but never in the muskegs either there or at Belvedere. The Connecticut warbler in this locality is a bird of the poplar woods.”

According to Dr. Roberts (1936), in Minnesota the Connecticut warbler “so far as discovered, makes its summer home in cold tamarack and spruce swamps of typical Canadian Zone character. Such places are numerous and wide-spread in northern Minnesota.” But it has evidently not been found there in anything like the numbers found in Alberta under the conditions described. On the other hand, Ian McT. Cowan (1939) found it, in the Peace River District of British Columbia, established in its “territory in a grove of young aspens below an open stand of large poplars, aspens and white spruce.”

Spring: The Connecticut warbler is one of the few small birds that follow different migration routes in spring and fall. The spring route is through the West Indies and Florida, northwesterly across the southern Alleghenies, and then northward through the broad Mississippi Valley. It is rarely seen in spring east of these mountains and north of South Carolina and western North Carolina (Asheville). There are, however, scattering spring records, mostly sight records, as far north as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. Todd (1940) lists only three spring specimens for western Pennsylvania, and says: “During its spring sojourn the Connecticut Warbler keeps in the shelter of low brush and thick undergrowth, especially in swampy places. Rarely does it venture more than a few feet above the ground, and it pays little or no attention to ‘squeaking.'” Forbush (1929) mentions only one spring specimen for Massachusetts, but adds several sight records that he considers reliable.

Brewster (1906) says, however: “They never appeared in spring, nor is there a single record in which I have full confidence of their occurrence at that season in any part of Massachusetts.”

In the Mississippi Valley, it is a common spring migrant, occurring rarely as far east as extreme western Pennsylvania, and more commonly from Ohio westward. At Buckeye Lake, Ohio, Milton B. Trautman (1940) calls it “among the last of the warbler transients to appear,” and says: “In spring this warbler was found almost entirely in brush tangles of the remnant swamp forests, and on only 2 occasions was an individual seen in the upland type of woodlands.”

George H. Lowery, Jr. (1945), advances some grounds for assuming that this and the mourning warbler “are at least in part” migrants across the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi Valley.

Nesting: Seton (1884) tells of finding the first nest of the Connecticut warbler: “As I went on, a small bird suddenly sprang from one of the gravelike moss-mounds. It seemed distressed, and ran along with its wings held up, like a Plover just alighting. On seeing that I would not be decoyed away, it ran around me in the same attitude. Recognizing that it was the Connecticut Warbler, I took it, and then sought out the nest in the moss. It was entirely composed of dry grass, and sunken level with the surface.”

Forty years elapsed before any more nests were reported. These were found by Richard C. Harlow, with the help of A. D. Henderson, near Belvedere, Alberta. The latter writes to me: “In 1923, Mr. Richard C. Harlow took at least two and, if I remember rightly, three nests with eggs near Belvedere. I helped him hunt the last of these nests on June 19, 1923, and secured a picture of the nest and eggs. The nest, which contained four eggs, was well concealed at the side of a bunch of dry grass, which overhung the nest, and it was a slight hollow in the ground lined with dry grass, with an inner lining of finer grass. The nest was in the open in rather short grass and weeds, near the edge of poplar woods. The females are very secretive and keep mostly to the ground or near it, and are difficult to observe. Previous to finding this nest, I had started the female from the nest, or close to it, and she crept away along the ground much after the manner of a mouse.”

Another nest, found June 25, after Mr. Harlow had left, was on a ridge covered with an open growth of fire-killed poplars, small bushes, and weeds. “It was made of a few leaves on the outside, a few bark strips and vine stems, and was lined with fine fibres and horsehair. It was completely hidden and was attached to rose bush canes 6 inches from the ground.”

Mr. Harlow now tells that, up to 1926, he has found 8 nests of the Connecticut warbler, 2 sets of 3 eggs, 5 sets of 4, and 1 set of 5 eggs, all in the vicinity of Belvedere. What he describes in his notes as a typical nest was found in open poplar woods on a ridge above a small slough, surrounded by a growth of willows, into which the female always went when flushed. The nest was at the base of a small, spreading wild rose bush, well under the spreading lower branches, entirely concealed, well sunken in a scratch in the ground, and draped about by fine, dead grass. He describes the nest as much more frail than that of the mourning warbler and made of fine grasses and plant fibres.

According to Dr. Roberts (1936) and several other observers, for which he gives the references, the Connecticut warbler, in Minnesota, always nests in spruce or tamarack bogs, in sphagnum moss or among other northern bog vegetation. One of the best accounts for this region is given by N. L. Huff (1929). He describes a swamp in Aitkin County, northern Minnesota, in which he found this warbler breedIng, as follows:

This swamp is perhaps half or three-quarters of a mile wide and two miles or more in length. Much of its area is covered with a pure stand of a small black spruce, some parts with an equally pure stand of tamarack, but in places these two species are more or less mixed together. The pitcher plant and the sundew thrive here, as do the buckbean and the wild calla, the coral root, the moccasin flower, and that rare and gorgeous orchid, the dragon’s mouth (Aret1~ue bulbosa). * *

The spot chosen for the nesting site was a little opening among the black spruce trees, not more than 30 yards from the margin of the swamp. A luxuriant growth of sphagnum covered the ground everywhere to a depth of several Inches. The nest was a rather deep, rounded cup, compact and well made. Inside it measured an inch and a half in depth, and two inches in width. The wall of the nest was approximately half an inch In thickness, and was composed entirely of fine dry grasses, except for a few black plant fibers resembling horse hairs, woven into the lining of the bottom. It was sunken in a mossy mound, the top of the nest being level with the top of the moss. Labrador ten and swamp laurel, low bog shrubs that formed a dense tangle throughout the little opening, overtopped the moss by a foot or more and offered ample protection for the otherwise open nest.

Eggs: Four or five eggs make up the usual set for the Connecticut warbler. The eight eggs in the Thayer collection in Cambridge are ovate and have a slight gloss. The creamy white ground color is speckled, spotted and blotched with “auburn,” “bay,” and “chestnut,” with underlying spots of “brownish drab,” “light vinaceous drab,” and “light Quaker drab.” They seem, generally, to be more boldly marked than those of the Kentucy warbler. Some eggs are heavily blotched or clouded with “wood brown.”

The eggs of one such set are all clouded wit.h large patches of brown, which merge with the undertones of drab, and one egg has the large end entirely covered. The markings tend to be concentrated, but do not form a wreath as often as with the eggs of many other warblers. The measurements of 39 eggs average 19.5 by 14.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 21.3 by 14.3,19.9 by 15.6, 17.3 by 14.0, and 18.8 by 13.2 millimeters (Harris).

Young: We have no information on the incubation of the Connecticut warbler nor on the development and care of the young while in the nest. But Francis Zirrer (MS.) has sent me the following account of the behavior of the young after leaving the nest, as observed near his woodland dwelling near Hayward, Wis.: “A pair breeding nearby in 1942 was hardly ever seen until July 20, when the whole family appeared among the tamaracks in the rear of the dwelling and remained there for nearly 2 weeks, part of the time within sight of our windows. At first the young kept close to the ground, in small tamaracks, other evergreens and bog shrubbery, but most of the time, and apparently preferably, in the piles of treetops and other coniferous slashings of which there are several nearby. There the birds moved in and out, after the manner of wrens. Time and again I saw the old birds feeding young on the top of these slashings and saw the young disappear out of sight again after being fed. A few days later, however, the young birds were moving about freely, coming at times quite close to the dwelling. Although most of the searching for food and feeding the young was done in the tamaracks when they were near the dwelling, the old birds every once in a while would disappear among the dense brambles on the edge of the bog and feed the young, mostly with raspberries, with an occasional green caterpillar.

“On August 2, for the first time, they disappeared entirely out of sight of the windows, but after a short search I found them about 80 yards away. From then on every day I found them farther away, but until August 20 the birds remained within a narrow belt of evergreens. * * * After August 20 the birds had apparently begun to band with others of their kind into larger flocks, for a flock of about 20 to 25 was seen several times.”

Plumages: Kilgore and Breckenridge (1929) give us the only account we have of the juvenal plumage of the Connecticut warbler: “The nestling, which was just passing from the downy to the juvenile plumage and was probably far enough advanced to leave the nest within 2 or 3 days, shows the following characters. Upper parts dark olive-brown, breast and sides snuff-brown merging into buffy-yellow on the belly, legs and feet very light flesh color.”

Dr. Dwight (1900) describes the first winter plumage of the male as “above, including wings and tail, brownish olive-green almost exactly like G. triohas, but usually greener and grayer. Below, unlike G. trichas, being canary-yellow, washed on the sides with pale olive-brown, and with broccoli-brown on the throat often concealing cinereous gray, the chin wood-brown. The orbital ring conspicuously pale buff.”

He says that the first nuptial plumage is acquired by a partial prenuptial molt, ninvolving much of the head and throat, which become clear plumbeous or ashy gray instead of brown, slightly veiled with olive-brown on the pileum and with drab-gray on the throat, the orbital ring white.”

A complete postnuptial molt in summer produces the adult winter plumage, which “differs from the first winter dress in being cinereous gray instead of brown on the head and throat, palest on the chin, and slightly veiled with drab-gray on the throat, and olive-green on the crown. The back is greener and the yellow below rather brighter. The orbital ring is white. The birds with deeper plumbeous throats are probably still older. This dress differs but little from the nuptial, a fact not generally known.”

The adult nuptial plumage is “acquired perhaps by a partial prenuptial moult as in the young bird or possibly by wear alone.”

The female, in first winter plumage, is “browner above and on the throat than the male, but often indistinguishable. The first nuptial is acquired chiefly by wear. The adult winter is similar to the first winter but rather grayer on the throat resembling the male in first winter dress. The adult nuptial and later plumages are never as gray as those of the male.”

Food: Very little seems to be known about the food of the Connecticut warbler. Audubon (1841) observed two “chasing a species of spider which runs nimbly over the water, and which they caught by gliding over it, as a Swallow does when drinking. * * * On opening them I counted upwards of fifty of the spiders mentioned above, but found no appearance of any other food.”

Dr. B. H. Warren (1890) says that it “feeds on beetles, larvae, spiders, snails and sometimes on small seeds and berries.”

Behavior: While with us on the fall migration, the Connecticut warbler is not particularly shy, though rather retiring. As we find it in the swampy thickets or in damp meadows among scattered bushes, we may see it walking quietly on the ground, or starting up when disturbed, it stops to perch on some low branch, watching us intently for several seconds before seeking the seclusion of the denser shrubbery. These birds are excessively fat in the fall, so fat in fact that it is difficult to make a good specimen of one. Huff (1929), however, writes:

In his summer home the Connecticut Warbler is a shy and elusive bird, so secretive in his manner that he would rarely be seen here, even by those looking for him, were it not for his betraying song.

When driven from his song perch by too close approach of his observer he escapes, often unseen, from the opposite side of the tree, and the first Indication of his departure may he his jubilant, triumphant song gushing from a tree several yards away. If one is fortunate enough to see him enter another tree nearby, one is impressed with the remarkable facility with which he creeps, half bidden, through the tree until he reaches a secure position, separated from his observer by a limb or a small mass of foliage. More than once as he scampered along a hranch, his body low, his head extended, seeking a suitable hiding place, I have seen him pause an Inch beyond the coveted spot. With head and shoulders visible he takes a hasty peep at his observer, then suddenly retreats a step or two and adjusts his position until he is wholly obscured. *

If one remain perfectly still or in hiding for a while, the singer forgets one’s presence and sooner or later will move out of his hiding place, walking along on a limb or occasionally hopping to a nearby branch, taking some tiny insect or other tidbit that meets his fancy, all the while repeating his song several times a minute. His relative inactivity, his rather deliberate movements, now afford an excellent opportunity for observation. * ï *

Whether he had forgotten my presence or merely regarded me now as a part of the landscape, I do not know, but he no longer sought to conceal himself. He often sat motionless for several minutes, except for the shaking and quivering of his body which always accompanied his singing.

Mr. Harlow tells me that a female that he watched returned to her nest three times within an hour; she always walked back to the nest.

Voice: In his first account of the nesting of the Connecticut warbler, Seton (1884) says of its song: “It may be suggested by the syllables, beecher4eecher-beecher-beecher-beecker-beecher. It is like the song of the Golden-crowned Thrush, but differs in being in the same pitch throughout, instead of beginning in a whisper and increasing the emphasis and strength with each pair of notes to the last.” Later (1891), he recorded another type of song which “nearly resembled the syllables ‘Fr’u-chap pie fru-chap pie lint-chap pie whoit,’ and is uttered in a loud, ringing voice, quite unlike the weak, hurried lisping of the Wood Warblers, which are nesting abundantly in the adjoining dry spruce woods.” Mr. Harlow (MS.) refers to its song as heard on the breeding grounds as “very distinctive, whip-pity, whip-pity, whip, clear, ringing, deliberate and resonant, with a definite accent on the first syllable.” Various other renderings of the song have been given in syllables, all of which give similar impressions of it, and some of which suggest the song of the Maryland yellowthroat as well as that of the ovenbird. The carrying power of the song is shown by the fact that Mr. Trautman (1940) “heard a male singing more than 300 yards away. Even at that distance the song was readily heard above a brilliant morning bird chorus” Huff (1929) writes: “The song of the Connecticut Warb]er varies with different individuals, and at times with the same individual. The volume may be changed, and certain syllables may be changed or omitted, but the quality of his tone is unique and practically invariable, especially as regards two syllables, ‘freecker,’ always included in his song. So characteristic is his voice that one having heard him may identify him more quickly by his song than by sight. His voice is sharp, piercing, penetrating, rather shrill yet pleasing, and is one that I always associate with the wild swampy wilderness where he sings.”

This warbler sings nearly as freely on the spring migration as on its breeding grounds. Trautman (1940) says: “More than 80 per cent of all identified birds were singing, and had it not been for the singers the species would have been considered very rare rather than uncommon.”

In the fall it is usually silent except for its distinctive call notes. Dr. Chapman (1907) calls this “a sharp, characteristic peek.” Francis H. Allen writes to me: “I have recorded an autumn note as a sharp chip like the syllable witch; that is, it seems to have both a w and a cA in it. It struck me as a distinctive note.” Gerald Thayer wrote to Dr. Chapman (1907) : “The only note I have ever heard from it is a very quick, sharp call, with a clipped-short metallic ring, plink, easily remembered and differentiated among warbler chips.”

Dr. Tyler and Walter Faxon, two expert and careful observers, were confident that they heard several Connecticut warblers singing on September 25, 1910, in the swamp referred to below. Dr. Tyler has sent me the following account of it: “When we entered the swamp our attention was at once attracted by a bird song which was new to us; it came from the high trees deep in the swamp. My notes, speaking out of this dim past, record that the song suggested to both of us, but rather faintly, that of a parula warbler, but neither of us was satisfied with our provisional diagnosis.

“Later we heard the song repated many times from birds near at hand, and we were impressed again by its novelty, but now by its distinct dissimilarity from the parula’s buzzing voice. The notes were far too loud for a parula, too clear and full-voiced, but they had suggested Compsothlypis to us because they were given with a sort of rotary effect as opposed to a to-and-fro rhythm.

“The song: clear, ringing, and very loud: was made up of four notes, all strongly emphasized, sounding like tkree, three , three, three, pronounced in two or three syllables each. The pitch ran up the scale slightly, and the quality suggested to both of us the mourning warbler’s voice. On this notable morning Connecticut warblers were scattered throughout the swamp, an area of twenty acres or so. We must have seen a dozen, perhaps twice that number, during the two hours we spent there. On one occasion three jumped up from the ground into the same shrub, and time after time from one end of the swamp to the other we started single birds. A few days later we heard the song here again. The Connecticut warbiers were still present, but we never actually saw a bird in the act of singing, although once we heard the song from a shrub from which, a moment later, jumped one of the birds. Nevertheless, because of the large number of Connecticut warblers gathered here on these two days, because we could ascribe this song to no other species of bird, and because it fitted well the published descriptions of the bird’s song, we had little doubt in our minds that we had heard Connecticut warblers singing during their autumn migration. This was the only time in his life that Mr. Faxon ever heard the song, although we often saw the birds afterwards, and in all the years since I have never heard it again.”

Field marks: The Connecticut is a rather large warbler and rather plainly colored, with no white in the wings and tail, but with a pronounced eye ring, white in the adult and buffy or yellowish in the young. The adult male is olive-green above and yellow below, with a broad, light-gray throat. The female and young are browner. The adult male might be confused with the mourning warbler, but it is larger, has no black on the breast and has a complete and conspicuous eye ring; the latter is the best field mark in any plumage, regardless of age or season.

Fall: On its return to its winter quarters the Connecticut warbler follows a partially different route from that taken in the spring. From its breeding range in central Canada it migrates almost due east to New England, largely avoiding the Mississippi Valley south of northern Illinois and Ohio, and thence southward along the Atlantic coast through Florida and the West Indies to its winter home in South America.

Mr. Trautman (1940) says of the fall migration in Ohio: “In this migration the species was not recorded as frequently nor in as large numbers as in spring, and seldom more than B birds were seen in a day. It is probable that the species was as numerous as it was in spring, since the nonsinging birds appeared in equal numbers in both seasons. In fall this warbler was not confined to dense tangles of remnant swamp forests, but also inhabited brushy, weedy, and fallow fields.”

The following note from Dr. Winsor M. Tyler is typical of our experience with this warbler in Massachusetts in the fall: “There used to be a wooded swamp in Lexington, Mass., not unlike the region near Fresh Pond where, in the 1870’s, the Cambridge ornithologists often observed the Connecticut warbiers. In the Lexington swamp, years later, Walter Faxon and I used to find the birds in the fall, starting them from among the beds of jewel weed which grew profusely there. I spoke of this locality when writing of the veery and of the golden~vinged warbler, for both of these birds bred in it commonly every year.

“The Connecticut warbler, as we see it in the fall migration, is a very distinctive bird. It starts up from nearly underfoot and, alighting for a moment at short range, often in full view; jerks about in the shrubbery, peering inquisitively at us, its eye ring giving the odd effect of a man looking over his spectacles with eyebrows raised. if really startled, the bird retires to the high trees where it walks sedately over the branches. Its throat at this season varies from brownish yellow to smoky gray, and a striking character, as we look up at the bird, is the long under tail coverts which come nearly to the tip of the tail.”

William Brewster (1906) used to find these warblers very abundant in certain mvainps near Cambridge during September, and writes:

We used to find Connecticut Warbiers oftenest among the thickets of clethra, Andromeda ligustrina, shad-hush, and black alder, which formed a dense undergrowth beneath the large maples that shaded the wooded islands of this swamp, and in the beds of touch-me-not (Impattens) that covered some of Its wetter portions. They were also given to frequenting the banks of the numerous intersecting ditches, especially where the deadly nightshade, clinging to the stems of the bushes, trailed its gray-green foliage and coral-red berries over the black mud or coffee-colored water. In such places they often literally swarmed, but so retiring and elusive were they that hy any one unacquainted with their habits they might easily he overlooked. They spent most of their time on the ground under or among the rank vegetation, where they would often rematn securely hidden until nearly trodden on.

DISTRIBUTION
Range: Southern Canada and north-central United States south to central South America.

Breeding range: The Connecticut warbler breeds north to central eastern British Columbia (probably’ Tupper Creek) central Alberta (Manly, Athabaska, Lac la Nonne, Battle River, probably Grand Prairie, Peace River, and Lac Ia Biche) ; and probably central and northeastern Ontario (Moose Factory, Lowbush, Gargantua, Sundridge, and Algonquin Park). East to northeastern Ontario (Moose Factory) and northern Michigan (Porcupine Mountains, Huron Mountains, Munising, McMillan, and Bois Blanc Island). South to northern Michigan (Bois Blanc Island) ; northern Wisconsin (Onenta and Wascott) ; northern Minnesota (Itasca Park, Gull Lake, Aitkin County, Cambridge, and Tower); southern Manitoba (Duck Mountain, Lake Saint Martin, Carberry, Aweme, Shoal Lake, and Sandilands); and southern Alberta (Glenevis). West to southern Alberta (Glenevis) and central eastern British Columbia (probably Tupper Creek).

Winter range: The winter range of the Connecticut warbler is known only through specimens from central western Brazil (Allian~a and Rio San Lourenvo); and probably north to central Venezuela (Cumbre de Valencia and Carabobo).

Migration: L ate dates of spring departure are: Brazil: Tonantins, April 9 and Venezuela: Rancho Grande, near Maracay, Aragua, April 29.

Early dates of spring arrival are: Bahamas (casual) : Cay Lobos Light, May 9. Florida: Stock Island in lower Florida Keys, and Mosquito Inlet, May 9. Georgia: Atlanta, May 5. South Carolina: Chester, May 10. North Carolina: Asheville, May 12. West Virginia: Ritchie County, April 25. District of Columbia: Washington, April 30. Maryland: Baltimore County, May 5. Pennsylvania: Crystal Lake in Crawford County, May 18. New Jersey: Makania Swamp, May 6. New York: Keene, May 15. Massachusetts: Wachusett Mountain, May 10. Louisiana: Monroe, April 27. Arkansas: Monticello and Hot Springs National Park, April 28. Tennessee: Memphis, April 23. Kentucky: Bowling Green, April 21. Missouri: Columbia, May 4. Illinois: Chicago region, May 3 (average May 15). Indiana: Bloomington, April 27. Ohio: Oberlin, May 3; Columbus, May 3 (average for central Ohio, May 12). Michigan: Muskegon County, May 4. Ontario: Guelph, May 9. Iowa: Polk County, Hillsboro, and Wall Lake, May 5. Wisconsin: Ripon, May 10. Minnesota: Minneapolis, May 11 (average of 16 years for southern Minnesota, May 25). Texas-Houston, April 20. North Dakota: Fargo, May 23. Manitoba: Aweme, May 18 (average, May 27). Alberta: Edmonton, May 20.

Late dates of fall departure are: Alberta: Glenevis, September 5. Manitoba: Shoal Lake, September 6; Aweme, September 3 (average, August 30). North Dakota: Fargo, October 1. Texas-Cove, November 5. Minnesota: Minneapolis, September 19. Wisconsin-Madison, October 4. Iowa: Polk County, October 1. Ontario-Point Pelee, October 2. Michigan: Detroit and vicinity, October 8. Ohio-Youngstown, October 16; Columbus area, October 12 (average, October 2). Indiana: Richmond, October 9. Illinois: Chicago region, October 13. Kentucky: Bardstown, October 11. Arkansas: Washington County, October 14. Louisiana: Monroe, October 9 (only fall record). Quebec: Hudson, October 4. Nova Scotia: Sable Island, October 6. Maine: Westbrook, September 20. New Hampshire: Jeff erson region, October 6. Vermont: Woodstock, October 2. Massachusetts: Boston, October 29. Rhode Island: Green Hill, October 5. Connecticut: New Haven, October 13. New York: Idlewild, Long Island, November 6; East Hampton, Long Island, November 26. New Jersey: Union County, October 18 (average of 9 years, October 1). Pennsylvania: Jeffersonville, October 16. Maryland: Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge, October 29; College Park, November 7. District of Columbia: Washington, October 22 (average of 13 years, October 12). West Virginia: Bluefield, October 1. Virginia: Rosslyn, October 24. North Carolina: Raleigh, October 24. Florida: Sombrero Key, October 9.

Early dates of fall arrival are: North Dakota: Cass County, August 16. Texas: Commerce, August 28. Minnesota: Hutchinson and Frontenac, August 29. Wisconsin: New London, August 24. Iowa: Marshalltown, August 22. Ontario: King, August 21. Michigan: Sault Ste. Marie, August 19. Ohio: Waverly, August 10; central Ohio, August 27 (average, September 8). Indiana: Lake County, August 31. Illinois: Glen Ellyn, August 14. Quebec: Hudson, August 18. Maine: Cape Elizabeth, August 30. New Hampshire: Randolph, August 18. Vermont: St. Johnsbury and Wells River, August 21. Massachusetts: Belmont and Martha’s Vineyard, August 19. Connecticut: East Hartford and Litchfield, September 1. New York: Frost Valley in southern Catskills, August 16; Alley Pond, Long Island, August 17. New Jersey: Passaic, August 24. Delaware: Delaware City, September 3. Maryland: Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge, September 9. District of Columbia: Washington, August 28 (average of 21 years, September 21). West Virginia: Bluefield, September 10. Virginia: Rockbridge County, August 31. North Carolina: Raleigh, September 28. Florida: St. Marks, September 21. Bahamas: Nassau, October 12. Costa Rica: San Jos~, October 6. Colombia: Bonda, Santa Marta region, October 22. Venezuela: La Trilla, October 23. Brazil: Allian~a, Rio Madeira, November 16.

Egg dates: Alberta: 8 records, June 15 to 25.

Manitoba: 2 records, June 12 to 21.

Minnesota: 2 records, June 12 and 13 (Harris).