CRISSAL THRASHER 421 



occurred among cactuses, and the only place where he saw it actually 

 associating with Bendire's and Palmer's Thrashers, was at Camp 

 Lowell, where the latter species, with other desert birds, came to 

 drink at a water-hole and thus occasionally mingled with the Crissal 

 Thrashers, which inhabited the neighboring thickets." 



M. French Oilman (1902) says that, on the California side of the 

 Colorado River, "great numbers of them can be found in the dense 

 thickets of mesquite and screw-bean in the depressed portion of the 

 desert near the Salton sink," which is from 10 to 260 feet below sea 

 level. 



Nesting. — ^We found only two nests of the crissal thrasher in south- 

 eastern Arizona in 1922. Near Fairbank, in the San Pedro Valley, 

 on May 27, a nest containing one egg was seen about 8 feet above 

 ground in a vine-covered willow in a row of these trees growing along 

 an irrigation ditch. The other nest, found on June 1 near Tombstone, 

 was placed 3 feet from the ground in a dense sagebush on the edge of 

 an arroyo, where it was well hidden (pi. 85) ; it was made of thorny 

 twigs with a lining of fine bluish fiber ; it held three eggs. 



Dean Amadon (MS.) reports a nest, found near Tucson on June 24, 

 1938, that was placed on a branch of a willow next to the trunk and 

 about 8 feet above ground ; this was near a ditch leading away from 

 a pond in a brushy area ; at that date it contained one young bird, per- 

 haps a week old, and two unhatched eggs. A set of two eggs in the 

 F. W. Braund collection, taken near Phoenix on March 17, 1896, came 

 from a nest in a catsclaw bush on the desert. 



A nest found by Dr. Mearns (1886) near Fort Verde, Ariz., on 

 February 18, 1886, was described as follows : "The nest was saddled 

 upon the fork of a mesquite-bush, about 4 feet from the ground, in part 

 supported by the thorny branches of a neighboring bush. It rested 

 upon a pile of sticks, and was surrounded by a bristling array of 

 spiny 'haw' and mesquite twigs of moderate size ; within this barricade 

 the nest proper was placed ; it is bowl-shaped, and, with the exception 

 of a few feathers, composed entirely of vegetable substances very 

 neatly felted into a compact, warm nest. The principal materials are 

 fine withered grass, stems of plants, and shreddy inner bark. Ex- 

 ternally it measures 150 mm. in height by 300 mm. in width; the 

 internal depth, 45 mm. ; internal diameter, 90 mm." 



Mr. Oilman (1902) writes of the nests found in the Colorado 

 desert : 



On March 18 and 19 we found 10 nests containing eggs or young. With 

 one exception they were all built close up to an over-hanging limb making 

 it difficult to insert the hand. All but one were also in the densest part of the 

 mesquite and rather hard to see. And hard to get at too as anyone who 

 has crawled through a mesquite thicket can testify. The nests were from 2y-2 

 to 6 feet from the ground— the average being about 31/2 feet and only one 

 758066 — 48 28 



