402 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



uttering their thin, shrill notes, and displaying their ruby crowns to 

 the utmost." 



It would not be surprising if rivalry in song were also one of the fea- 

 tures in the contest for supremacy. 



Nesting. — So far as I can learn, the nests of the ruby-crowned king- 

 let are always built in coniferous trees, generally in spruces, sometimes 

 in firs, and more rarely in some of the western pines. They are placed 

 at various heights from the ground, from 2 to 100 feet; a number of 

 nests have been found at 50 or 60 feet, many between 15 and 30, and 

 comparatively few below 15 feet. Winton Weydemeyer (1923) 

 reports a Montana nest in an unusual location; it "was about fifty 

 feet from the base of a partly fallen spruce, * * * fourteen feet 

 from the ground, and eighteen inches from the end of a seven-foot 

 branch extending downward from the trunk." 



Most of the nests reported have been attached to the pendant twigs 

 beneath the branch of a spruce, w T ell concealed among the twigs, 

 partially or wholly pensile, and usually near the end of the branch 

 where the foliage is thickest; but very rarely the nest may be placed 

 on a branch; W. L. Sclater (1912) states, probably on the authority of 

 Denis Gale, who found a number of nests in the mountains of Colorado, 

 that the nests are '"sometimes simply saddled on a horizontal bough." 

 The nest that I found in Newfoundland was only 8 feet from the 

 ground in a spruce, suspended between two drooping branches, or 

 rather large twigs; the tree stood in a rather open situation; it con- 

 tained no eggs on June 5, but Edward Arnold collected a set from it 

 later. The lowest nest reported was found by Maj. Allan Brooks 

 (1903) in the Cariboo District of British Columbia; it was "in a small 

 spruce not four feet high; the nest was close to the stem and about 

 two feet from the ground; it was a very deep cup, almost a vertical 

 cylinder." And at the other extreme, Dr. Mearns (1890) records a 

 nest in the Mogollon Mountains in Arizona that was "attached to 

 the end of a horizontal branch upwards of a hundred feet above the 

 ground," in a spruce. John Swinburne (1890) found a nest in the 

 White Mountains of Arizona, at an altitude of "about 8500 to 9000 

 feet," that "was placed in a bunch of cones at the end of a small 

 branch, in a spruce-fir tree, at an altitude of about sixty or seventy 

 feet from the ground. * * * The nest was completely hidden by the 

 fir cones surrounding it, and was placed about four feet out from the 

 stem of the tree." 



Dr. Paul Harrington, of Toronto, writes to me that he found a nest 

 of the ruby-crowned kinglet, at Chapleau on June 10, 1937, 30 feet 

 from the ground in a black spruce on the border of a bog, and says: 

 "I was first attracted to the spot by the agitated male, which sang 

 from close range. Whenever I came near the nesting tree the bird 



