284 BULLETIN 203, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



most of the Townsend's warblers were males in high plumage, the 

 sight was most attractive. All were in constant song and flitting 

 about with rapid movements. In their company were many chestnut- 

 backed chickadees, a few Sitka kinglets, many Hammond's flycatchers, 

 and now and then an Audubon's Avarbler and a red-breasted nuthatch. 

 This movement began about half past eight in the morning and lasted 

 until ten o'clock, when the number of birds began to diminish rapidly, 

 and during the remainder of the day was inconsequential." 



On April 25, 1917, he saw a similar flight at the same place. "The 

 day was rather warm and somewhat overcast, and the wave con- 

 tinued intermittently throughout the greater part of the day, the 

 song of Townsend's warbler being much in evidence most of the time. 

 In this movement the birds passed by in small detached companies 

 at intervals, but the aggregate number was large." 



Nesting. — Not too much is known about the nesting habits of Town- 

 send's warbler, but enough is known to indicate that nests reported 

 in willows during the last century were evidently wrongly identified. 

 The species is now known to nest only in firs, though possibly it may 

 sometimes be found to select other conifers as nesting sites. Nests 

 and eggs are still very scarce in collections. 



The first authentic nests were found by J. H. Bowles (1908) near 

 Lake Chelan, Wash., on June 20, 1908. The two nests, each contain- 

 ing four newly hatched young — 



were both placed about twelve feet up in small firs, one some five feet out on a 

 limb, the other close against the main trunk. Both were saddled upon the limb, 

 and not placed in a fork nor in a crotch. 



The construction of both nests was identical, and entirely different from any 

 of the descriptions that I have read. They were firmly built, rather bulky, and 

 decidedly shallow for the nest of a warbler. The material used appeared to be 

 mostly cedar bark, with a few slender fir twigs interwoven. Externally they 

 were patched with a silvery flax-like plant fiber, while the lining seemed to be 

 entirely of the stems of moss flowers. To an eastern collector it resembled an 

 unusually bulky and considerably flattened nest of the Black-throated Green 

 "Warbler, lacking any sign of feathers, however, in its construction. 



A nest with five eggs is in the Thayer collection in Cambridge, taken 

 by C. deB. Green on Graham Island, British Columbia, June 24, 1912. 

 It is described as placed "on top of the big limb of spruce tree," and 

 is large, compact, and well-built, being made largely of fine plant 

 fibers, mixed with strips of grasses, mosses, lichens, fine strips of inner 

 bark, plant down, and a few spider coccoons — all firmly woven to- 

 gether and neatly and smoothly lined with long, fine, white hairs and 

 one feather. It measures externally 214 inches in height and 3 by 3i/^ 

 in diameter ; the cup is 1^^ inches deep and about 2 inches in diameter. 



A set in my collection now in the U. S. National Museum was taken 

 by F. R. Decker in Chelan County, Wash., on June 23, 1923 ; the nest 



