86 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



Courtship. — I can find no published account of the courtship of 

 the western meadowlark. It probably consists of song and plumage 

 display. I have some interesting notes, sent to me by J. W. Slipp, 

 who watched a bird that displayed before its reflected image in the 

 "shiny chromium hub caps of three parked cars," on the campus of 

 a college at Tacoma, Wash., on May 8, 1940. "Visiting seven of 

 these hub caps in succession, it spent an average of about a minute, 

 at each, apparently fascinated by its own reflected image. Walking 

 up to the first wheel the bird stretched itself nearly erect, then began 

 to strut excitedly back and forth, turning first one side and then the 

 other to the mirroring of the hub cap, and repeatedly flirting its 

 wings and tail in such a way as to flash the white outer rectrices. 

 All this was accompanied by frequent short ejaculatory notes, inter- 

 spersed occasionally with full-throated snatches of the beautiful song 

 characteristic of the species." On another occasion a similar perform- 

 ance was given on the running board of a Plymouth sedan, with his 

 image reflected in the lustrous surface of the car. This all may have 

 been only "shadow-boxing," but it suggests what the courtship 

 display might be like. 



Nesting. — The nesting habits of the western meadowlark are not 

 very different from those of other meadowlarks, due allowance being 

 made for any difference in environment. Samuel F. Rathbun tells me 

 that in western Washington this bird begins nesting as early as the 

 first week in April; he describes in his notes a very fine nest: "This 

 nest was beautifully built, and placed in a growth of low grass, a small 

 tuft, on rather rocky land. It was finely arched over with strips of 

 fine, dry, fibrous bark taken from a nearby small dead tree. The 

 body of the nest was made of dry, fine grasses, it being lined with very 

 fine, dry grass. It was placed in a shallow depression of the ground. 

 This nest, if removed from the ground would be nearly round, with an 

 entrance on the side." The site was on the shore of a lake in eastern 

 Washington, in a nesting colony of about 150 pans of ring-billed gulls. 

 A nest that I found on the shore of Many Island Lake, in Alberta, was 

 similarly located, but well concealed in long grass. 



E. S. Cameron (1907) says that, in Montana, "Meadowlarks make 

 their nests entirely of grass under the sage-brush or in tussocks of 

 grass, and roof them over with the same material. * * * On June 30, 

 1906, I noticed a bird sitting in a flowering cactus patch which was the 

 prettiest nest I have seen." 



Jean M. Linsdale (1938) describes a nest found in Smoky Valley, 

 Nev., as follows: "The nest was hi an open part of a meadow, and was 

 built in a depression in the ground, fully 3 inches deep and 8 inches in 

 diameter. It was well covered with a dome-shaped roof composed of 

 fibers of bark and plant stems woven in with the growing vegetation. 



