. VEERY 219 



bird stood perfectly quiet for a while. Then both birds sidled along 

 the branch a little way, one moving toward the other, the other 

 drawing away, both moving stiffly and very slowly." 



Nesting. — The veery's nest is usually on the ground or very near it. 

 In the moist woods where veeries build, if the ground is wet as it often 

 is, the bird lays a thick foundation of dead leaves to protect the cup 

 from moisture and thus often constructs a nest large for the size of 

 the bird. When building, the veery seems preoccupied and pays little 

 heed to the presence of observers. I found a veery early one May 

 morning carrying nesting material — dead, very wet leaves — to a nest, 

 a big loose heap of leaves, perhaps two-thirds completed. It was 

 supported by three shoots of a small cherry shrub, at the side of a 

 narrow, unfrequented path in the woods. The top of the nest was 10 

 inches, the base 5 inches, above the ground. The bird carried the 

 leaves to the nest and arranged them in it while four of us stood a few 

 yards away, and did not leave until we had stepped to within 5 feet 

 of her. Later she sat on the nest while we walked past, so near the 

 nest that our coats brushed against the branches that supported it. 

 Several observers have reported similar tameness. 



Elliott Coues (1874) gives an excellent description of a typical 

 veery's nest which he found in Dakota, "placed," he says — 



on a little heap of decaying leaves caught at the foot of a bush; resting on these, 

 it was settled firmly in the crotch formed by several stems diverging at once from 

 the root. The base of the nest was quite damp, but the floor was sufficiently 

 thick to keep the interior dry. The nest was built of various slender weed-stems, 

 grass-stalks, and fibrous strips of bark, compactly woven and mixed with diied 

 leaves; the latter formed the lining of the base inside. The cavity is rather small, 

 considering the bulkiness of the whole nest, measuring only about two inches and 

 a half across by less than two in depth. The whole is as large as an infant's head, 

 and of irregular contour, fitting the crotch in which it was placed, and bearing 

 deep impress of the ascending stems of the bush. 



T. Gilbert Pearson (1916) also gives a good description of a normal 

 nest. He says: 



The nest rested among the top limbs of a little brush-pile, and was just two feet 

 above the ground. Some young shoots had grown up through the brush and their 

 leaves partly covered the nest from view. It had an extreme breadth of ten inches 

 and was five inches high. In its construction two small weed-stalks and eleven 

 slender twigs were used. The nest w as made mainly of sixty-eight large leaves, 

 besides a mass of decayed leaf-fragments. Inside this bed was the inner nest, 

 two and a half inches wide, composed of strips of soft bark. Assembling this 

 latter material I found that when compressed with the hands it was about the 

 size of a baseball. 



Henry Mousley (1916) points out a distinction between the nests of 

 the veery and those of the hermit thrush as he found them in Province 

 of Quebec, Canada, "in that the lining has always consisted of dry 



