WESTERN GNATCATCHER 367 



"Perhaps the most unique nesting site ever seen of this species was 

 the top of a pine cone in a sprawling bull pine. The cone was on a 

 lonely limb fully thirty feet above the ground at the butt of the tree, 

 but as the tree hung over a gully the nest was double that distance 

 vertically from the ground." 



Most nests of the western gnatcatcher are more or less decorated 

 with lichens of colors to match their surroundings, though generally 

 not as thickly covered as the nests of the eastern race. But Mr. 

 Chamberlin mentions two nests that were entirely devoid of lichens; 

 these were in oaks that had been killed by fire, as the whole area 

 had been burned over; as there were no lichens available, the nests 

 were decorated with bits of burnt bark, which helped to make them 

 match their surroundings in the charred trees. 



Harriet W. Myers (1907) found a nest "near the top of a holly 

 bush that had grown so tall that it was more like a tree than a shrub" 

 and another "on the south side of a tall, straight eucalyptus tree about 

 twenty feet from the ground, its only supports being the tiny twigs 

 that grew out from the side of the tree." 



California nests of western gnatcatchers have been recorded at 

 heights as low as 3 feet in bushes and as high as 45 feet in oaks. 



The only nest we found in Arizona was 7 feet from the ground on 

 a horizontal limb of a black-jack oak (pi. 44), in Miller Canyon, in 

 the Huachuca Mountains. 



Eggs. — The four or five eggs that make up the usual set for the 

 western gnatcatcher are indistinguishable from those of the eastern 

 subspecies. The measurements of 40 eggs average 14.3 by 11.4 milli- 

 meters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 16.2 by 11.5, 

 14.0 by 12.0, 13.5 by 11.5, and 13.7 by 10.7 millimeters. 



Young. — The incubation, brooding, and care of the young seem to 

 be performed by this western subspecies in the same manner as by 

 the eastern blue-gray gnatcatcher. Mrs. Myers (1907) gives the fol- 

 lowing feeding record for one brood: 



On this same morning from 7:25 to 8:25, the birds fed thirty-five times, less 

 than two minutes apart; the male twenty-seven times, the female fourteen. The 

 next morning, in the hour from 6:37 to 7:37, the birds fed forty-six times, the 

 male thirty-six and the female twenty-four times. In looking over my notes I 

 find that the birds fed more often early in the morning than later in the day. 



In five hours, 6:30 to 11:30, they fed one hundred and fifty-two times, or an 

 average of thirty-eight times an hour. Allowing sixteen hours to their day, we 

 can estimate that they fed six hundred and eight times. The word "gnatcatcher" 

 proved to be a misnomer, the food brought so often being small white worms. 



Food. — The food of the western gnatcatcher is not essentially 

 different from that of its eastern relative. Professor Beal (1907) 

 makes the following general statement on the food of the California 

 gnatcatchers: "No complaints have been made that these busy crea- 



