NEST AND EGGS OF THE WATER THRUSH 305 



end of March. Henshaw saw tbe birds in Colorado iu the mid- 

 dle of May, and in Arizona late in August. May is the month 

 in which their arrival has been noted for the Middle States and 

 New England, and also for the Saskatchewan region. Could 

 all the data we have be verified and digested, we should prob- 

 ably find that the Water Thrush is a bird of rapid and not of 

 the most regular migration, likely to appear at such times and 

 places that it becomes difficult to reconcile the seemingly con- 

 flicting testimony we possess. 



June is the height of the breeding season with this bird. 

 During this month, egg-laden nests have been found so far apart 

 as are Maine and Alaska — early in the month in the New Eng- 

 land locality just mentioned, and later on the Yukon Elver. 

 Doubtless only one brood is reared in the higher latitudes to 

 which the birds resort ; the case may also be the same in other 

 localities, and probably is so, considering how soon — by the 

 fore part of August — these birds reappear in places where they 

 are not known to breed, as in Illinois and Jamaica. In the few 

 instances which have come to the knowledge of naturalists, the 

 Water Thrush's nest was built on the ground or its equiva- 

 lent. The Alaskan nests to which I have alluded were placed 

 by the river bank, at the foot of willow-bushes, one of them 

 beneath a small pile of drift-wood, and contained four to six 

 eggs. These and other Arctic nests, as preserved in the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, are about four inches across by two-thirds 

 as much in depth; they are composed chiefly of moss, com- 

 pactly matted and mixed with little sticks and straws, one of 

 them having also a large amount of circularly-woven fibrous 

 material in a state of disintegration. A nest found in Maine 

 by Prof. A. E. Verrill, and described with particularity by Dr. 

 Brewer, was built in an excavation iu the side of a decayed log, 

 which overarched the structure somewhat as the domed por- 

 tion of the nest of the Golden-crowned Thrush covers the main 

 part of the structure. It was a beautiful fabric, built chiefly 

 of green Hypnum mosses, with which a few withered leaves and 

 plant-stems were mixed, having a compact inner portion or 

 lining of the fruit-stems of the same Hypnum, and showing a 

 number of slender black rootlets intertwined around the outer 

 circumference. It was flatter and shallower than the nests I 

 have seen, being four and a half inches across, but only one and 

 a half high, with a cavity half an inch less in depth. "This 

 nest contained five eggs, the brilliant white ground of which, 

 20 B 



