388 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The brown markings vary in size from the finest possible dots to rather large 

 blotches. In most of the specimens they are distributed pretty thickly over the 

 entire shell, but in nearly all they are most numerous about the larger ends 

 where they form a more or less distinct wreath pattern, while in four or five 

 (and these have the lightest ground color) they are nearly confined to the larger 

 ends, the remainder of the egg being sparsely marked. * * * In both sets 

 the whitest, most sparsely spotted eggs were the freshest, showing that they were 

 the last ones laid. 



The measurements of 50 eggs average 13.3 by 10.4 millimeters; 

 the eggs showing the four extremes measure 15.0 by 10.5, 14.4 by 

 10.7, 11.9 by 9.8, and 14.7 by 9.7 millimeters. 



Young. — Miss Stanwood (MS.) writes: "The young kinglets are 

 about as large as bumble bees when they come from the shell. They 

 are blind and almost naked, save for a few tufts of fine, gray clown. 

 At the approach of the parent birds, they raise their little, palpitating 

 bodies and open wide their tiny, orange-red mouths for food. These 

 mouths are about the color of the meat of a peach around the stone. 

 The veins showing through the thin skin give the bodies much the 

 same tone. At first the young are fed by regurgitating partly digested 

 food; later moths, caterpillars, and other insects furnish their diet. 

 They are very fond of spruce bud moths and caterpillars. A beautiful 

 triple spruce was attacked by these pests and almost denuded of its 

 foliage. I noticed the kinglets frequenting this tree a great deal. 

 In a season or two, the foliage was as luxuriant as it had been in the 

 past. Such are the good offices performed by the golden-crowned 

 kinglets and their young. The feet of the young are large and 

 strong for the size of their bodies. If a person attempts to lift one 

 from the nest, the little fellow will tear the lining out before he will 

 release his hold. Just before the feathers appear the young begin 

 to preen, and after that spend much of the remainder of their time 

 in the nest smoothing and oiling their plumage. The parent birds 

 remove all waste, depositing it far away from the little home, which 

 is kept clean and sweet. 



"I have seen kinglets feeding young in the nest as late as the last 

 of June, but by the eighteenth or twentieth day of June, goldcrest 

 families are usually foraging in the trees. As late as the middle of 

 September in 1912, I saw mature kinglets industriously feeding a 

 large family of young birds in a seedling grove." 



I can find no reference anywhere to the period of incubation or to 

 the duration of life in the nest. 



Plumages. — Miss Stanwood (MS.) says that the small nestlings 

 have "a few tufts of fine, gray down." The sexes are alike in the 

 juvenal plumage, which Ridgway (1904) describes as follows: 

 "Pileum brownish gray or grayish olive, margined laterally with a 

 rather indistinct line of black; otherwise similar to adults, but hind- 



