WHITE-EARED HUMMINGBIRD 457 



labor of gathering the down. But an even greater proportion of 

 the material used in the nests is derived from the woolly insect galls 

 growing on the oak leaves. The color of these galls varies from 

 rusty brown or reddish brown to light buff. Although the dark- 

 colored galls on the upper sides of the leaves are more abundant, the 

 hummingbirds prefer the pale ones, which are found only on the 

 lower sides of the foliage, and neglect, or use very sparingly, those 

 with brownish hairs. 



Thus insects, either indirectly, by laying the eggs that stimulate 

 the leaves to produce hairy galls, or directly, by freeing the normal 

 woolly covering from the body of the leaf and making it easy 

 to remove, supply the white-eared hummingbird with practically 

 all the downy stuff for her nest. Spiders, in spinning their webs, 

 furnish her the material necessary to bind the down together and 

 to attach the nest to the supporting twigs. Green mosses and grayish 

 lichens are attached to the exterior for decoration. Some nests 

 are very well covered with these plants, which give the prevailing 

 color to the exterior, while others are so sparingly decorated that 

 much of the down shows through. In form, the nest is roughly a 

 hollow sphere with the upper quarter cut away. The outside diam- 

 eter of the open cup varies from 1% to 2 inches; the height from II/4 

 to 2% inches. The interior of the cozy little nest is very nearly 

 as broad as deep and measures about an inch in both diameter and 

 depth. The rim is quite noticeably incurved, and this helps to 

 hold the eggs inside when fierce November winds whip the slender 

 branches of the raijon bushes and threaten to roll them out. 



Robert T. Moore contributes the following notes on nests of the 

 white-eared hummingbird, found by Chester C. Lamb and himself 

 in Chihuahua and Sinaloa, Mexico : "In his journal Mr. Lamb states 

 that the Laguna Juanota nest was found 'in a small oak, 6 inches 

 in diameter and 25 feet tall, growing in a grove of the same on the 

 north hillside of a rocky butte at the lake.' It was saddled on a 

 twig among the leafy extremities of a branch 2 feet from the trunk. 

 The nest is composed almost entirely of a buff-colored plant down, 

 the only exceptions consisting of one small oak twig woven loosely 

 to the bottom of the nest and greenish gray lichens ornamenting 

 the exterior portion. Measuring 1 by li/g inches on the inside, it has 

 no other lining except the plant down. The outside measurements 

 are 1% by iy2 inches." 



He tells of a second nest, twice as large as the above, which re- 

 sembles it closely, "except that two oak catkins have been woven 

 into the sides and the lichen decorations are more complete." 



Then, of a third nest, he says : "Its total bulk is nearly five times 

 that of the first nest and four times that of the second, and yet the 



