CONTINENTAL RUSTY BLACKBIRD 285 



experiences throws more light on the home life of this species than 

 can be found elsewhere. The first two trips were made too early in 

 the season, the last ten days in May; most of the nests held young 

 birds, though one contained a set of five eggs that was too heavily 

 incubated to be saved; on subsequent seasons he was more successful. 

 He makes the following general statement about the nesting sites: 

 "For sites they seem more apt to choose evergreens, preferably thick 

 clumps of second growth spruce and balsam, though I have found 

 them in dead trees or in clumps of deciduous bushes, button-bush 

 and sweet gale, along the shores of some stream." 



He says that they did not breed in colonies, the nearest nests he 

 ever found being "a quarter of a mile apart." His lowest nest "was 

 built about 2 feet up in a little, low black spruce, one of a clump on 

 a floating island, in a swamp caused by raising the waters of a large 

 lake on which it was situated." His highest nest was "about 20 feet 

 up, in a tall, unhealthy looking spruce. It was placed in one of those 

 thick bunches of evergreen twigs that sometimes grow close to the 

 trunk of a spruce, and could not be seen from the ground." All the 

 other nests were much less than 10 feet above the ground or water. 

 One nest was in a dead spruce top that had floated down the stream 

 in the spring floods and become stranded near its mouth. It was 

 only a foot above the surface of the water, in a tangle of usnea moss, 

 and so well hidden that "we had paddled by it in our canoe time after 

 time without ever suspecting its presence." Another nest was beside 

 a "brook, in a tangled growth of sweet gale overhanging a ditch, and 

 about two feet above the water." Still another was "about 10 feet 

 back from the edge of the stream, in a thick growth of button-bushes. 

 The nest was placed in a crotch, a couple of feet above the water, 

 just as a Red-wing's would have been." He shows a photograph of 

 a nest, "built in the top of an old stump, standing in the water, out 

 from the shore of a lake." 



To illustrate the persistency of these birds in attempting to raise a 

 brood, he took a set of eggs from a nest on May 24; 12 days later, on 

 June 5, he took the eggs from their secoad nest; the birds built their 

 third nest and laid a set of four eggs within 11 days; he took these 

 eggs, also, but the persevering birds built a fourth nest and were 

 allowed to raise a brood of three young. 



Near Eed Deer, Alberta, W. E. Saunders (1920) found several 

 nests "in the typical location, over water. * * * Exceptions doubtless 

 occur, but I have never found nests of the Rusty other than over 

 water, and Brewer's never very near water." 



Kennard (1920) gives the following excellent description of the nest: 



In construction, those that I have seen, have all been particularly well built, 

 rather bulky structures, and practically alike. A foundation is usually laid of 



