1 66 



THE LAZULI BUNTING. 



for separate splieres : slie to skull< and liide and escape the hostile e_\e in tlie 

 discharge of iier maternal tluties; he to lose himself against the Ijlue of 

 heaven, as he sings reassuringly from a tree-top, or sends down notes of 

 warning upon the approach of danger. 



is a rambling warble, not unlike that of 



The song of the Lazuli Piuiiling 



the IndigD Bunting (C. cyaiica), 



but somewhat less energetic. Its brief 

 course rises and falls in short 

 cadences and ends with a hasty 

 jumble of unfinished notes, as tho 

 the singer were out of lireath. 

 Aloreover, the bird does not take 

 his task very seriously, and he does 

 not burden the mid-day air with 

 incessant song, as does his tireless 

 cousin. 



Somewhere in the shrubbery and 

 tangle, whether of saplings, berry- 

 Imshes, roses, ferns, or weeds, a 

 rather l)ulky nest is built about an 

 upright fork, at a height of two 

 or three feet from the ground. A 

 nest observed in Yakima County 

 was begun on the iQtli of June and 

 jiractically completed by the after- 

 noon of the following day, — this 

 ;iltlio the first egg was not laid 

 until the 26th. "Hemp," milkweed 

 fibers, and dried grasses were used 

 in construction, and there was an 

 elaborate lining of horse-hair (poor 

 dears : what will they do when the 

 automobile has fully supplanted the 

 horse ? ) . 



AvHviia means pleasant, but the 

 female amenitv is anything else, 

 wdien her fancied rights of maternity are assailed. Her vocabulary is 

 limited, to be sure, to a single note, but her repeated chip is expressive of 

 all words in dis from distrust to distress and violent disajiprobation. 



Taken near Spokane, Photo by Fred S. Merrill. 



A I..\ZULI BUNTING'S NEST. 



