294 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 paRt i 



alizations may be made. The nests are not pla^ced in the dense 

 outer foliage, as is the custom of the brown towhee and the lark 

 sparrow, nor in the upper branches, as favored by the goldfinch and 

 the phainopepla, but rather in the more open interior of the tree, 

 often in the fork of an upright limb. The usual height of the nests 

 is from 5 to 7 feet, but when favorable sites do not occur within 

 these limits, they may be located at slightly less or much greater 

 heights. 



Of the house finches of Santa Fe County, N. Mex., J. K. Jensen 

 (1923) says: "They are not at all particular about a nesting site as 

 they build in the branches of a tree, in cavities of trees and walls, 

 in tin cans hanging on fenceposts, and I have even seen a nest on the 

 ground under a rabbit weed. It is one of the few birds that will 

 use a *cholla' cactus for nesting site." At the writer's home in the 

 San Gabriel Valley, where there is no scarcity of nesting sites, a speci- 

 men of a "cholla" cactus, Opuntia tunicata, at one time contained 

 four occupied linnet's nests, showing that they have an actual pref- 

 erence for these spiny plants. From his observations in San Diego 

 Comity, Calif., H. W. Henshaw (1894) wrote: 



So tame and confiding have these pretty Finches become that I am persuaded 

 that the larger proportion of their nests are built not in trees and bushes as for- 

 merly, but in all sorts of odd nooks and crannies about the house and barn; and 

 even when they are compelled by the lack of facilities to resort to bushes and 

 shrubbery, they choose those as close to the house as possible. 



The pertinacity with which the House Finch clings to a chosen nook about a 

 house when their nests are destroyed is amazing, and is equalled only by the 

 English Sparrow. I have known five nests with their contents to be destroyed 

 one after another, and each time the same pair set to work with apparent uncon- 

 cern to build anew. 



Writing from San Jose, Calif., Ernest Adams (1899) summed up 

 the matter thus: "Experience has taught me that the House Finches 

 may nest anywhere. I have found them occupying nests of orioles, 

 towhees, grosbeaks, cliif swallows, blackbirds and portions of hawks' 

 abodes; besides tin cans, old hats and stove pipes and now I shall 

 add hollow limbs. One bird entering the opening of a small cavity 

 actually squeezed her way back for two and a half feet to sit on her 

 eggs in total darlmess. Another reared her brood in the deep cavity 

 of a Calif ornian Woodpecker in an oak while a third selected a similar 

 hole in a telegraph pole. The latter contained six eggs." F. C. 

 Willard (1923) discovered a nest in a woodpecker hole about 30 feet 

 up in a large sycamore in southern Arizona, but in this case the nest 

 was placed so that the bird could look out while incubating. In 

 the vicinity of Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah, states Howard 

 Knight in an as yet unpublished manuscript, the Colorado blue 

 spruce appears to be the house finch's favorite nesting tree, probably 



