38 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 37 paRT i 



female had started building a second nest some distance away. In 

 one instance the feeding was long delayed. When the male finally 

 did come and feed the young, it departed to a ravme outside its 

 territory. Says Ivor: "His voice now was the courtship song, so 

 different from the territorial; so entrancingly beautiful that words 

 cannot describe it, and his courtship display an exquisite tableau. 

 He spread and dropped his rapidly quivering wings so low that the 

 tips of the primaries grazed the ground upon which he stood. His 

 body was held in a crouching position with the breast almost touching 

 the ground: his tail partly spread and slightly elevated: his head re- 

 tracted so far that his nape lay against the feathers of his back. The 

 mating song poured forth from his open beak as he moved toward the 

 female, waving his head and body in an erratic dance. The downward 

 and forward sweep of his wings revealed in striking contrast the 

 blacks and whites of the separated flight feathers, the vivid rose of 

 the under wing coverts, and the white of the rump. The song was 

 soft, low, and continuous, with a great variety of notes." An un- 

 mated female apparently wandering through his territory had caused 

 temporary desertion of family. She seemed to pay him no attention, 

 and the male returned to his family. 



Nesting. — The nests of the rose-breasted grosbeak are usually 

 placed at no great height, seldom more than 15 feet or less than 6 

 feet above the ground, and mostly less than 10 feet, but some notable 

 exceptions have been recorded. At the southern end of its breeding 

 range, in the mountains of northern Georgia, Thomas D. Bm^leigh 

 (1927b) reports that most nests are found in rhododendron thickets 

 from 5 to 15 feet above the ground, but he records two exceptionally 

 high nests; one was 25 feet from the ground "at the extreme outer 

 end of a yellow birch sapling"; and the other "was fully fifty feet 

 from the ground at the extreme outer end of an upper limb of a tall 

 slender chestnut." 



From the northern end of this grosbeak's breeding range Mrs. 

 Louise de Kiriline Lawrence of Rutherglen, Ontario, writes to me: 

 "In the spring of 1946 I was surprised to find two pairs of rose- 

 breasted grosbeaks buUding their nests in white birches at a height 

 of between 40 and 50 feet from the ground. * * * These two are 

 the only nests I have observed at such heights. The usual heights 

 are from 4 to 20 feet from the ground in this area. The nesting trees 

 I have seen used, apart from white birch and white and balsam 

 spruce, have been red maple and white pine." 



In his notes sent to me, A. D. Du Bois records, among 13 nests 

 found in Illinois and Minnesota, 2 nests in apple trees, 2 in small 

 elms, 1 in an osage orange hedge, and 1 in a haw bush. 



