ctober number of "BIRDS" you will find several
Warblers and Finches. Try to keep track of them and may be you can do
as many others have done--tell the names of new birds that come along
by their pictures which you have seen in "BIRDS."

[Illustration: From col. F. M. Woodruff.
KENTUCKY WARBLER.]

THE KENTUCKY WARBLER.

Between sixty and seventy warblers are described by Davie in his
"Nests and Eggs of North American Birds," and the Kentucky Warbler is
recognized as one of the most beautiful of the number, in its manners
almost the counterpart of the Golden Crowned Thrush (soon to delight
the eyes of the readers of BIRDS), though it is altogether a more
conspicuous bird, both on account of its brilliant plumage and
greater activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, very
pugnacious, continually chasing one another about the woods. It lives
near the ground, making its artfully concealed nest among the low
herbage and feeding in the undergrowth, the male singing from some old
log or low bush, his song recalling that of the Cardinal, though much
weaker.

The ordinary note is a soft _schip_, somewhat like the common call of
the Pewee. Considering its great abundance, says an observer, the nest
of this charmer is very difficult to find; the female, he thought,
must slyly leave the nest at the approach of an intruder, running
beneath the herbage until a considerable distance from the nest, when,
joined by her mate, the pair by their evident anxiety mislead the
stranger as to its location.

It has been declared that no group of birds better deserves the
epithet "pretty" than the Warblers. Tanagers are splendid, Humming
Birds refulgent, others brilliant, gaudy, or magnificent, but Warblers
alone are pretty.

The Warblers are migratory birds, the majority of them passing rapidly
across the United States in spring on the way to their northern
nesting grounds, and in autumn to their winter residence within the
tropics. When the apple trees bloom they revel among the flowers,
vieing in activity and numbers with the bees; "now probing the
recesses of a blossom for an insect, then darting to another, where,
poised daintily upon a slender twig, or suspended from it, they
explore hastily but carefully for another morsel. Every movement is
the personification of nervous activity, as if the time for their
journey was short; as, indeed, appears to be the case, for two or
three days at most su