160 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



July 13, the new growth of cat-tails had reached its full height and 

 flower stalks were present. The nests containing eggs at that date 

 were new and placed 3 to 4 feet above the water. Of the nests found 

 on June 11, three were lined with a handful of fluff from the last year's 

 seed-stalks. These were the only such seen. A few nests were in 

 small willow trees." 



He has sent me some notes on the same colony, made the following 

 year: "The first birds seen were two males on March 29. On April 

 26, three females were present and the number of males was increasing 

 rapidly. No signs of nests appeared until May 10 when five had been 

 begun. The first eggs were found May 21 and the first young on 

 June 3. Repeated rains the first of June converted the ditch into a 

 river. Several nests were flooded on the seventh and by the tenth 

 all of the earlier ones were covered. On the latter date ten new nests 

 were found, high up in the small willow trees, except one which was 

 in a last year's sweet clover plant." 



Approximately 70 nests were in use at the date of flooding. No 

 more nests were built in the cattails until July 19, when two nests 

 with eggs were found. Most of his new nests were built in 4 days 

 and the first egg was laid from 1 to 4 days thereafter; but in one case 

 the birds took 7 days to build the nest and waited another week be- 

 fore laying the first egg. 



Geographically, the blackbirds that we found nesting abundantly 

 in southwestern Saskatchewan in 1905 and 1906 are referable to this 

 race, though we doubtfully recorded them at that time as jortis, as 

 explained earlier in this account. They were very common around 

 the sloughs and along the creeks, nesting in the flags and long grasses 

 on the edges of the sloughs and over the water in the shallower por- 

 tions. I collected a nest, containing four fresh eggs, at Crane Lake 

 on June 5, 1905; it was placed 10 inches above the water in a bunch 

 of reeds (Scirpus) on the edge of a slough; the nest was well made of 

 dry reeds and was lined with dry grasses. 



In the Peace River district of British Columbia, Cowan (1939) 

 found giant redwings breeding rather late in the season. "Egg laying 

 commenced about the end of May at Austin's Pond where the birds 

 were all building in dead sedges before the new growth was well 

 under way. Many pairs on the shore of Swan Lake did not complete 

 nest building until about June 23. Here the nests were mostly in 

 the dense stands of Equisetum growing in the shallow water and in 

 consequence nest building had to await growth of these early in 

 June." 



At Austin's Pond, he says: "Repeated observation led us to the 

 conclusion that there were but four males with the six females. On 

 one occasion one male was observed to mate with two different females 



