EASTERN PURPLE FINCH 267 



male lifted himself from the rock on wings fluttering so rapidly as to 

 be practically invisible and descended upon her for about two seconds. 

 a fairy union on the rock in the sun. When the act was ended, both 

 birds sat motionless, facing each other for several seconds. Then 

 the female shook herself and flew off. A moment later the male 

 followed. 



Nesting. — Nearly all the nests of the purple finch that I have seen 

 or read about have been placed in coniferous trees, mainly spruces. 

 In my egg-collecting days, we boys could always find one or more 

 nests in a row of white spruces, buUt along a suburban road as a 

 windbreak. The nests were fairly well concealed in the thickest parts 

 of the trees and not far from the tops, perhaps 15 or 20 feet from the 

 ground. But I once found one in an apple tree in an orchard. The 

 nests were made of fine twigs and rootlets and were lined with finer 

 rootlets and horsehair. 



In the Cambridge region of Massachusetts, William Brewster (1906) 

 found purple finches nesting "in hilly pastures sprinkled with Virginia 

 junipers among the dense foliage of which they love to conceal their 

 nests." They bred there so commonly at one time that he "found no 

 less than six nests containing eggs or young within a space of half an 

 acre," on June 6, 1869. 



E. A. Samuels (1883) says: "The nest is usually built in a pine or 

 cedar tree, and is sometimes thirty or even forty feet from the 

 ground — oftener about fifteen or twenty. It is constructed of fine 

 roots and grasses, and is lined with horsehair and hog's bristles. 

 One specimen in my collection has the cast-off skin of a snake woven 

 in the rest of the fabric; and I have seen nests lined with mosses." 



Eggs. — The eggs laid by the purple finch vary from three to six, 

 with four or five most commonly found. They are slightly glossy 

 and ovate, sometimes tending to short-ovate. The ground color may 

 be "pale Niagara green," or "Etain blue," and they are sparingly 

 speckled and spotted with shades of "olive-brown," "deep olive," 

 "citrine drab," "mummy brown," and black. The usual type has 

 sharp and clearly defined spots of black and browns scattered over 

 the entire egg. Less frequently the eggs are marked with clouded 

 spots of the lighter tones such as "citrine drab" and "deep olive," but 

 all show a tendency to concentration of spots toward the large end 

 where they often form a loose wreath. 



The measurements of 50 eggs average 20.2 by 14.6 millimeters; the 

 eggs showing the four extremes measure 22.4 by 14.2, 19.8 by 16.8, 

 17.8 by 13.7, and 20.1 by 13.5 millimeters. 



Young. — Ora W. Knight (1908) writes: "Both male and female 

 assist in buUding the nest, but I have only once caught the male 

 assisting in the task of incubation, and then he was perched on the 



