1032 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 pakt 2 



impossible to distinguish the bird or the cradle when looking directly 

 into the nesting cavity." 



In wooded country the junco typically nests at the edges of openings 

 in the forest canopy, such as those made by a stream, a logging road, 

 or a clearing. Preble (1908) describes an Athabasca nest that "was 

 built on the steep side of the river bank, and was quite bulky, the 

 outer portion being constructed of fine twigs, strips of bark, and 

 feathers. This foundation inclosed a cup-shaped nest of dry grass, thickly 

 lined with gray dog's hair." E. W. Jameson, Jr. (in litt. to Mr. Bent) 

 describes a nest he found on the Gaspe Peninsula in 1940 "on an east- 

 facing slope of birches and alders. The ground was covered with 

 grass, dead leaves, and bunchberries. The nest itself was in a cavity 

 four inches in underneath a dead stump, the opening protected by a 

 clump of club moss (Lycopodium) . Both parents were feeding insects 

 to the four half-grown young." 



B. P. Bole, Jr. (1941-1942) describes the nesting of a small colony 

 of juncos on Little Mountain, just east of Cleveland, Ohio, and in a 

 nearby hemlock-studded ravine known as Stebbens Gulch, which is 

 typical for the species in western Pennsylvania and southwestern New 

 York where similar Paleozoic rocks outcrop : 



Every one of the junco nests found on Little Mountain was in exactly the same 

 type of place. On this sandstone mesa the brows of the ledges and rocky outlying 

 chunks of puddingstone have curling forelocks of Polypody fern, and it is under the 

 overhanging fronds of these that the Juncos place their nests. As the ferns are 

 on the very edges of the cliffs, it is frequently a matter of some danger to get 

 into positions from which the nests can easily be seen or discovered. 



The nests themselves are made of rootlets of various ferns, that of the Polypody 

 being especially favored. There is a thin lining of dry sedges and grass. The 

 whole structure is very compact, and is placed well down in the roots and hanging 

 dead fronds of Polypody. When danger threatens, the female bird tumbles out 

 and downwards into the crevasse facing her; in this she flies for twenty feet or 

 more before rising into the low yellow birches and hemlocks lining the ledges. 



The junco often builds in rather unusual situations. Forbush 

 (1929) cites a junco nest on a ledge beneath the gable of a house in 

 Nova Scotia. Wendell P. Smith (1936) writes of a nest of dried grasses 

 and fern stalks and other vegetation 8 feet above the ground in a 

 trellis overgrown with woodbine (Psedera vitacea). Houston and 

 Street (1959) describe a nest in Saskatchewan built in a half-pound 

 tobacco can lying on its side and which contained three junco eggs and 

 three cowbird eggs. Basil J. Wilkinson showed me a nest near Olean, 

 New York, from which young were successfully fledged, in a wind-vane 

 bird-feeder mounted on an 8-foot iron pipe. The base of the tri- 

 angular feeder was open, and the two sides were glass. The nest was 

 jammed into the apex angle, just as it might have been into a niche in 

 a rock ledge. 



