352 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Proctor (MS.), for the parent to have to "pound it on a limb" before 

 offering it to the young. 



The normal span of nest life is 10 to 12 days. S. A. Grimes (1932) 

 wrote of a set of four eggs in the Jacksonville area that "hatched 

 May 10 or 11, and the young left the nest on the 21st." G. A. 

 Petrides (MS.) gives a period of 11 or 12 days for the brood that he 

 reported as having hatched on May 20, since they were "apparently 

 ready to leave the nest on the evening of May 31 ." Beryl T. Mounts 

 (1922) reported a nest near Macon, Ga., in which the eggs hatched 

 on or about May 16 and the young left the nest on May 26. 



E. H. Forbush (1929) wrote that, in the greater part of their range, 

 gnatcatchers rear but a single brood in a season but that two broods 

 are normal in the far South. However, S. A. Grimes (1928), one 

 of the most ardent and capable observers of nesting, stated that, in 

 the Jacksonville region, this species "raises only one brood in a 

 season." Though I cannot make a positive statement on this subject, 

 since I have never banded or otherwise marked gnatcatchers for 

 individual identification, I believe that some of the late nests I have 

 found were true second nestings and not second attempts by birds 

 that had failed the first time. Taking April 24 as a median date 

 for complete sets of eggs in northern Florida, a nest that I found 

 just being completed on May 25, 1930, may or may not have been 

 a second attempt by a pair that had lost their first nest; but a nest 

 just started on June 1, 1941, in which a brood was later successfully 

 reared, seems to me to represent a true second nesting; and there 

 can hardly be any doubt that a brood that I saw just out of the nest 

 on August 8, 1926, comes in this category. 



Plumages. — [Author's Note: The young gnatcatcher in juvenal 

 plumage is much like the adult female, both sexes being alike and lack- 

 ing the black forehead. An incomplete postjuvenal molt occurs in 

 July and August, which involves the contour plumage and the wing 

 coverts, but not the rest of the wings or the tail. This produces a 

 first winter plumage, which is similar to the previous plumage but 

 more washed with brownish on the back and sides. The first nuptial 

 plumage is acquired in February by a limited molt of the feathers of 

 the forehead, throat, and chin, when the black frontal band of the 

 male is acquired, the upperparts become bluer and the young bird 

 is now in adult plumage. A complete postnuptial molt occurs in 

 July and August. Young males lack the black frontal band during 

 the first fall and winter, and the females never have it.] 



Food. — In common with most of the other very small birds (though 

 not the hummingbirds) of Eastern United States, the blue-gray 

 gnatcatcher eats very little if any vegetable food; and, by virtue of its 

 fondness for some of the insects most harmful to man's interests, it 



