86 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



sapling. The three eggs were side by side, paralleL When first 

 observed the following day, they were still in this same position, but 

 on a second visit at 9:50 a.m. some 65 minutes later, the eggs had 

 "been rearranged in a more conventional design." When approaching 

 the nest the female first clung to the bark of a little cedar tree rising 

 above the bush, then went to the nest. The male came down once 

 from a hackberry tree to the cedar, then dropped into the nest-site, 

 but quickly departed. The young hatched July 6 and were still 

 present on July 12. On the other hand, Lillian Cleveland (1903), 

 who watched a nest finished on May 30, never saw the male near the 

 nest. 



Eggs. — Varying with the year and location, nests with eggs may be 

 found from May to August. Some extreme egg dates are as follows: 

 Maine, late June-July 15 (Knight, 1908); New York, May 25-first 

 of August (Eaton, 1914); Michigan, May 26-August 16 (Barrows, 

 1912; Berger, 1951) ; Ohio, June 6-August 7 (Phillips, 1951) ; Maryland, 

 May 24-August 16 (Stewart and Robbins, 1958) ; North Carolina, 

 May 22-July 16 (Pearson, Brimley and Brimley, 1959); Georgia, 

 May 17-July 23 (Burleigh, 1958) ; Alabama, May 12-August 12 (Imhof, 

 1962). The consensus of many observers is that the species is usually 

 double-brooded. Apparently no one has studied a marked population 

 to prove double-broodedness, but Burleigh (1958) states: "Two 

 broods are reared in Georgia each year, the first in late May and early 

 June, the second in July." And Pearson, Brimley and Brimley 

 (1959) claim that in North Carolina "two broods often are reared in 

 a season, each, of course, in a freshly built nest." According to 

 Parmelee (1959) "Allen says it is double-brooded and that the interval 

 between the start of the first nest (early June) and the second (late 

 July or early August) is long." To what extent a late nest represents 

 renesting following an unsuccessful earlier attempt at nesting is not 

 known. 



A. A. Allen (1933) says that if the first nest is started as early as the 

 first of June, it is the last of July or fh-st of August before the second 

 nest is under way. He questions whether the species customarily 

 uses the nest a second year because of the presence of mites and the 

 changes in the locations of the leaves that afford concealment and 

 protection. H. C. Oberholser (1938) states that occasionally the same 

 nest is used. E. II. Forbush (1929) goes further and says that the nest 

 is sometimes repaired and occupied year after year. 



F. M. Chapman (1932) states that the usual clutch is three to four 

 eggs, pale bluish white, but two-egg clutches are known from Alabama 

 (Imhof, 1962), northern Florida (Johnston, MS.), and California 

 (Bleitz, 1958). Oliver Davie (1889) describes the color as "white, 

 with a bluish or greenish tinge, unspotted or rarely thinly dotted 



