164 BULLETIN 19 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



indicate that it usually arrives around the middle of May, his earliest 

 date being May 6. George Willett tells me that it arrives in southern 

 Alaska mostly late in May, his earliest date being May 16. 



Nesting. — The only nest of the russet-backed thrush that I have seen 

 was evidently fairly typical of this subspecies. It was found on 

 May 30, 1914, in Los Angeles County, and contained three fresh eggs; 

 it was placed 8 feet from the ground in a crotch of a slender willow in 

 a grove of willows in a damp spot; there was a foundation of dead 

 leaves, twigs, and rubbish, mixed with mud, on which was built a 

 superstructure of twigs, leaves, and plant fibers; it was lined with fine 

 rootlets, fine fibers, and skeleton leaves. 



Six other California sets in my collections were taken from nests 

 in willows, blackberry tangles, or other low bushes; the lowest nest 

 was only 2 feet from the ground. J. Stuart Rowley tells me that, 

 in the vicinity of Los Angeles County, these thrushes seem to prefer 

 the tangles of wild blackberries, or the willow thickets in the lowlands, 

 as nesting sites. 



Mr. Rathbun says, in his notes from western Washington, that this 

 thrush nests from June 10 up to the middle of July, but the great 

 majority of the nests will be found during the latter half of June. 

 He has "found them generally well within the forest, and a favorite 

 location is among the low growth along the forest's edge, particularly 

 if in the proximity of the water." The nest "is generally built quite 

 close to the ground in a variety of places, sometimes in the salal shrubs 

 or on the top of fallen masses of the dead brackens, and many times 

 in some low-hanging, rather dense branch of a bush. On occasions 

 I have found nests at some considerable height above the ground 

 near the extremity of a limb of some small tree, but these locations 

 are out of the ordinary. The nests are almost always attractive in 

 appearance and well made. They consist outwardly of an abundance 

 of green mosses and dead leaves, and often with these are strips of 

 thin, flat inner bark; within this at times is some dry, rotten vegetable 

 matter quite smoothly moulded; and the nest is lined with dry grasses." 



He describes an especially beautiful nest as follows: "It was built 

 quite near the ground on a branch of a huckleberry bush. There 

 was first used in its construction a few of the dead stalks of the bracken, 

 into which was woven quite a mass of dead moss taken from the 

 trunks of fallen trees, this forming a substantial wall for the nest. 

 The outward covering was entirely of bright green, living strips of 

 moss, so beautifully placed that nothing but this color showed, and 

 this moss so arranged that the long strips hung downward, giving 

 the nest a draped effect. In its color scheme the nest blended per- 

 fectly with its location, for the under part was the shade of the twigs 



