178 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



wood and very little black lichen; it is lined with finer strips of the 

 above material. The sixth consists almost entirely of mosses and 

 lichens of different colors, reinforced with fine twigs. The materials 

 mentioned above by Dr. Brewer and below by Miss Stanwood appear 

 in many of the nests, and several of them are profusely decorated 

 around the base with loose strips of the outer bark of the yellow birch. 



Miss Cordelia J. Stanwood, of Ellsworth, Maine, who has sent me 

 some voluminous notes on the olive-backed thrush, describes one of 

 her nests as follows: "Foundation, swamp grass, spruce twigs, bracken 

 stipes, black and green usnea moss; cup of peat, taken up with roots 

 so that it resembles a mud cup ; lined with usnea moss, black and green, 

 and some of the black, thread-like parts of the roots of decayed 

 cinnamon ferns." 



She says that it takes the thrushes about four days, on the average, 

 to build the Dest. Most of her nests were in spruces or firs, but one 

 "nest rested in the crotch of a gray birch, formed by the bole of the 

 sapling and a rudimentary braDch, three feet above the ground. 

 It was well surrounded aDd concealed by the branches of young 

 firs." 



Ad editorial note in the Journal of the Maine Ornithological Society, 

 volume 5, page 27, mentions a nest found at Pittsfield that was in a 

 tall cedar about 30 feet from the ground, apparently a record height. 

 William Brewster (1938) records two nests, found at Umbagog Lake, 

 Maine, that were out of the ordinary: "The first was built precisely 

 like the nest of a Wood Thrush, on a prong of a dead birch some four 

 feet above the ground. The position of the second was unique — in 

 a hollow scooped in the earth that adhered to the roots of a fallen 

 tree, and perfectly concealed by a portion of the bank which projected 

 above it. The situation of this nest was in every way similar to that 

 usually chosen by the Water Thrush." 



J. R. Whitaker sent me a set of eggs from Grand Lake, Newfound- 

 land, that was taken from a nest in an old birch stump, 4 feet above 

 ground. Robie W. Tufts has sent me his data for five Nova Scotia 

 nests, all of which were in spruces or firs, from 4 to 8 feet up. 



Western nests are more often placed in deciduous trees and bushes. 

 A. Dawes DuBois reports in his notes a Wisconsin nest that was 

 "about 7 feet above ground, in the top of a maple sapling in a woods- 

 clearing grown up with underbrush, in low ground." Of his two 

 Montana (Flathead County) nests, one was "about Q% feet up in a 

 larch sapling, at a low place near a small spring," and the other was 

 "about 7 feet from the ground, supported on a dead tree-limb leaning 

 against a small maple." P. M. Silloway (1901) says that, in Montana, 

 the olive-backed thrushes' nests have been found in fir trees, in low 

 willow sprouts, and once in a syringa bush. 



