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



Mrs. Louise de Kiriline Lawrence writes Mr. Bent of a flight display 

 she witnessed at Rutherglen, Ontario, on Dec. 23, 1947. She describes 

 the male as rising almost vertically on rapidly beating wings. The 

 female was not receptive. 



Nesting. — Winter may find this bird breeding. A. Leith Adams 

 (1873) discovered a nest with three eggs in New Brunswick in the 

 middle of January 1868. Another nest had been brought to him a 

 few weeks earlier. He describes a nest as composed of black moss, 

 birch bark, and twigs with a lining of wool and moss. 



Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway (1874a) describe a nest Adams 

 found in 1868 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. This nest "is deeply 

 saucer-shaped, and composed of a rather thin wall of fibrous pale- 

 green lichens, encased on the outside with spruce twigs, and thinly 

 lined with coarse hairs and fine shreds of inner bark. Its external 

 diameter is a little less than four inches, the rim being almost perfectly 

 circular; the cavity is an inch and a half deep by two and a half broad." 



Bertrand E. Smith (1949) mentions two nests found near Calais, 

 Maine, on Feb. 20 and 22, 1948, by Wellington James. The first nest 

 was in a 6-foot spruce and only about 2 feet 8 inches above the ground. 

 Another snowstorm would have covered the nest. All four eggs 

 were broken. The second nest, containing three eggs, was built in a 

 thick spruce about 8 feet high. The cutting down of the first tree 

 may well have accounted for the broken eggs; a falling birch broke 

 two eggs in the second nest. This latter nest is described by Smith 

 as a — 



beautifully built structure, the extreme outside diameter of the compact mass is 

 10 cm., the overall depth 5.5 cm. The nesting bowl is 4.5X4.7 cm. in diameter 

 and 3 cm. in depth. The foundation of the nest consists of delicate grass stems, 

 very slender weed stalks and dead terminal spruce and a few hemlock twigs 

 among which there are tiny bits of Usnea moss and a few small insect cocoons. 

 The nest is lined with intricately woven, long, slender rootlets and tendrils of 

 unknown identity. Some of the tendrils are black in color, very closely resem- 

 bling horse hair in general appearance, but microscopical examination and tests by 

 burning proved their identity. No hair or feathers were present in any part of 

 the nest. 



Robie W. Tufts of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, wrote Mr. Bent of nest- 

 ing records on Feb. 8, 1906, with three eggs slightly incubated, and on 

 Feb. 26, 1906, with four eggs about one-quarter incubated. 



T. J. Egan (1889a) found a nest near Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Mar. 

 16, 1889. He comments on the absence of feathers or clay in the 

 nest and says: "The female was on the nest and allowed a visitor to 

 come within a few feet before leaving it, when she joined the cock 

 bird, a fine red fellow who was singing on the top of a neighboring 

 tree." 



