NORTHERN OLIVE WARBLER 155 



already mated, they promptly drive any wanderer of the same sex 

 from their selected bit of forest. I believe they return each year to 

 the same locality in which they made their home of the previous year, 

 as I have found them in the same patch of trees year after year while 

 other places near by, with the same apparent advantages, never seem 

 to be chosen." Dr. Taylor (MS.) saw a pair of olive warblers, 20 

 to 30 feet up in some yellow pines in the Santa Catalina Mountains on 

 May 13, 1928. They kept giving a whistled call with descending in- 

 flection. "The two birds were courting apparently, flying about, often 

 facing each other at short range, 6 to 18 inches, calling at very fre- 

 quent intervals." 



Nesting. — To William W. Price (1895) belongs the honor of finding 

 the first nest of the Arizona olive warbler. On June 15, 1894, on the 

 Chiricahua Mountains, he — 



saw a female, closely followed by a male, fly from a bush of spirea (Spirea 

 discolor) to the top of a small pine, and busy itself on a small horizontal limb 

 partially concealed by pine needles. She soon returned to the spirea, followed 

 by the male, which did not enter the bush but perched on a pine branch near 

 by. The female again flew with a dry flower-stem in her bill, from the bush 

 directly to the pine, where a nest was in process of construction. * * * ^ 

 few days after, a forest fire drove me from my camp, and it was not until July 

 1 that I was able to visit the nest. The female was sitting, and when frightened 

 from the nest, kept hovering about, but made no sound. The male did not 

 appear at all. The nest was compactly built and placed on a small horizontal 

 branch, about forty feet from the ground, and about six feet from the top of 

 the tree. The eggs, four in number, were in an advanced state of incubation. 

 * * * The body and walls of the nest are composed of rootlets and flower 

 stalks of Spirea discolor, and the inner lining consists of fine rootlets and a 

 very small quantity of vegetable down. It is a compactly built structure, 

 measuring about 4 inches in outer diameter by 1% inches in depth; the inner cup 

 measures 2 inches in width by 1% inches in depth. 



A few years later, O. W. Howard (1899) reported finding four nests 

 in the Huachuca Mountains ; one was about 30 feet up in the fork of a 

 large limb of a red fir ; another was in a sugar pine near the extremity 

 of a limb and about 30 feet from the ground ; a third was near the 

 end of a long slender limb of a yellow pine, about 50 feet up, and 

 well concealed among the long pine needles; the fourth was on a 

 branch of a red fir, not far from the trunk, and over 60 feet from the 

 ground. 



F. C. Willard (1910) , collecting in the Huachucas, says that "short- 

 leaf pines, long-leaf pines and firs are chosen for the nesting sites." 

 One female that he watched building her nest "was gathering rootlets 

 at the time and seemed very particular about them, picking up and 

 dropping several before selecting one which she thought satisfactory. 

 This she carried into a dense growth at the tip of a branch of a large 

 fir about one hundred yards away. The male was singing and feeding 



