286 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



blown rocky stretches where you seem in a bleak world of granite or 

 lava with only rock, rock, everywhere, suddenly, there on a stone 

 before you", stands this jolly little wren, looking up at you with a bob 

 and a shy, friendly glance. The encounter is as cheering as the sight 

 of a bird at sea, and before such meetings have been repeated many 

 times, you love the little wren as you do the barking conies that give 

 life and a touch of companionship to the barren rock slides of the 

 mountains." 



Nesting. — Two nests that we found in Cochise County, Ariz., were 

 built in holes in the steep, almost perpendicular banks of a little 

 arroyo that had been cut out like a miniature canyon by running 

 water. The holes were not far from the top of the cut-bank and 4 or 5 

 feet from the bottom of the cut, and were exposed by the cutting away 

 of the soil (pi. 54) ; they were probably made by gophers or some 

 other animal long ago, for the soil w^as baked too hard for the wrens 

 to have excavated them. The holes were about 12 inches deep, and 

 the nests were placed far back; the entrance to each nest was paved 

 with two or three handfuls of small, flat stones, which were also 

 found under and behind the nest. The nests were made of grasses, 

 straws, weed stems, and rootlets and were lined with fine grasses, 

 horsehair, and a few feathers. 



Mrs. Amelia S. Allen writes to me that she found rock wrens nest- 

 ing under similar circumstances near Livermore, Calif., "in an eroded 

 gulch 10 to 12 feet deep. Nests were in the earthen banks of this 

 gulch with not a rock outcropping in sight. In Corrall Hollow it- 

 self, we found a nest near the top of an earthen cut about 15 feet 

 high. It was lined with sheep's wool and contained six eggs." 



Frank C. Willard records several other nests in his Arizona notes. 

 One was in a hole in the wall of an adobe building, 10 feet up ; one 

 was 2 feet up in a hole in a large conglomerate boulder in a rocky 

 gulch, another in a hole in an old stone reservoir, and one was in the 

 top of a window casing in an adobe wall; the entrances to all the 

 above nests were paved with stone chij^s, and in one case the paving 

 was mixed with bits of wood. He mentions two other nests, one of 

 which was in an old stove and the other in an old table drawer in a 

 deserted house. 



The nests are often placed in cavities and small crevices under and 

 among loose rocks ; such nests are usually far out of sight and difficult 

 to find, as the birds give no indication of the exact spot among hun- 

 dreds of possible sites in a large area. Often the birds appear more 

 unconcerned when the searcher is near the nest than when he is far 

 away from it. Nearly always the entrance to the nest is paved with 

 small, flat stones, and, where these can be seen, the nest may be easily 

 located. In some cases there is no room for a paved walk to the 

 nests, or perhaps no necessity for it; but always, so far as I can 



