NORTHERN SMALL-BILLED WATERTHRUSH 479 



a few lone pines, fine holly trees, and dense patches of rhododendron. 

 It was a cool and shady retreat, the dense foliage of the large trees 

 shut out the sunlight, and the atmosphere was cooled by a steady 

 flow of clear, cold spring water, in some places nearly knee deep. It 

 was a locality well suited for such northern birds as the winter wren 

 and this waterthrush. The nest of the latter was neatly hidden in 

 a little cavity in a moss-covered stUmp prettily overgrown with ferns, 

 the hanging dead fronds of which partially concealed the nest ; it was 

 placed only 14 inches above the water of a small pool at the base of 

 the stump. The nest, an attractive structure, was made mainly of 

 sphagnum moss and skeletonized leaves and was lined with green 

 sphagnum and the red fruiting stalks of mosses. It held four fresh 

 eggs on May 24. 



I found two nests of the northern waterthrush on the heavily wooded 

 shores of Asquam Lake, N. H., in 1926. The first nest was under an 

 overhanging bank at the very edge of the rocky shore of the lake; 

 it was sunken into the soil of the bank in a sheltered hollow, and con- 

 tained four fresh eggs on June 16. The nest was largely made of 

 green mosses, mixed with a few twigs, many pine needles, a few fine 

 strips of inner bark, and some fine, black rootlets; it was lined with 

 very fine grasses and a little cow hair. The other nest was in a similar 

 location, but was far in under the roots of a large dead stub overhang- 

 in the bank on the shore of the lake; it was not quite finished on 

 June 18. 



F. H. Kennard mentions in his notes a nest found near Lancaster, 

 N. H., on June 14, 1910, that was placed in the moss on the side of a 

 moss-covered stump in a dark, swampy place. The nest was in plain 

 sight beneath the arch formed by two roots of the stump. T. E. 

 McMullen has sent me the data for eight nests found in the Pocono 

 Mountains of Pennsylvania, all found in the upturned roots of fallen 

 trees in swamps or along streams. 



Eggs. — The northern waterthrush lays either 4 or 5 eggs to a set, 

 apparently about evenly divided, occasionally only 3 and rarely 6. 

 These are ovate to short ovate and have little or no gloss. The ground 

 color is creamy white or buffy white, or rarely "pale, ochraceous-buff. 

 The eggs are speckled, spotted, and blotched with "auburn," "argus 

 brown," "Brussels brown," or "cinnamon-brown," with underlying 

 spots of "light purplish gray" or "fuscous." They may be finely and 

 sparsely speckled, or boldly blotched, but in general are more heavily 

 marked than tliose of the ovenbird. They may also be decorated with 

 small scrawls or cloudings of "wood brown." Occasionally this cloud- 

 ing almost entirely obscures the ground color. All types of markings 

 are concentrated at the large end. In looking over a large series of 

 these eggs, the gray spots seem rather less pronounced than on the 



