386 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



His lowest nest was only 8 feet from the ground. The only nest 

 that was not in a spruce was 18 feet up in a balsam fir. 



Ora W. Knight (1908) mentions a nest found near Bangor, Maine, 

 that was only 6 feet from the ground, and says that most of those 

 located by him in inland localities were "nearer forty to fifty feet in 

 elevation." Miss Cordelia J. Stan wood has sent me some voluminous 

 notes on the home life of the golden-crowned kinglet, near Ellsworth, 

 Maine, where she finds them nesting in both black and white spruces. 

 They begin nest-building in April, in spite of occasional snowstorms 

 at that season, and she has found a nest about half finished on April 25. 

 It requires about a month to complete the nest, in which the female 

 apparently gathers the material and does all the building, while the 

 male accompanies her and encourages her with song. She describes 

 the building process, as follows: "The kinglets selected for the roof of 

 their cradle a heavy spruce limb with a dense tip; and the female, 

 hopping down through the branch from twig to twig, attached her 

 pensile nest to the sprays. 



"The bird wove her spherical structure about herself much as the 

 caterpillar of the luna or cecropia moth weaves its cocoon about 

 itself, except that the kinglet had to gather her materials. The 

 bird stood on a twig on one side of the space she had chosen for her 

 nest and measured off her length, as far as the situation of the twigs 

 would permit, by attaching bits of spider's silk and moss to the twigs. 

 Thus she laid off the points for the approximate circle for the top of 

 the nest. Then she spanned the space through the center of the 

 circle, roughly speaking from north to south, with spider's silk and 

 moss, forming a sort of cable, which later assumed the appearance of a 

 hammock. After a time, when the bird came with moss or silk, she 

 would fly down upon the hammock as if to test its strength and 

 lengthen it. At all times, however, she worked all over the nest from 

 left to right, moving her beak back and forth as she secured the silk 

 and moss and stretched the web from one point of attachment to 

 another. As soon as the hammock would support the bird, she stood 

 in the center and walked around from left to right. When the 

 hammock was wide enough to admit of her sitting down, she modeled 

 the center of the suspended band by burrowing against it with her 

 breast, and making a kicking motion with her feet. Gradually she 

 embodied some of the twigs in the structure, as if for ribs, and oc- 

 casionally she snipped off a spruce twig to use in shaping the globular 

 nest. At last the bottom, or basketlike part, arose to meet the top 

 of the nest and the industrious gold-crest was hidden from sight as 

 she labored. 



"The creation was really a silken cocoon, in the walls of which was 

 suspended enough moss, hair, and feathers to render it a nonconductor 



