1074 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



nests. One was made of pine needles and vegetable stems placed 

 mider a little bunch of blueberries; another similar nest was more in 

 the open under a tall cluster of lupines. Skinner also tells about a 

 nest "built of grasses and lined with fine material, placed seven feet 

 from the ground on the back wall of a shallow formation cave at 

 Mammoth (Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park)." 



I have found no proof that the pink-sided race raises more than 

 one brood each year. M. P. Skinner (1920) says: "Yoimg birds 

 have been seen to fly as early as the end of June at the lower eleva- 

 tions; and as late as August 12 1 have found them in the same stage 

 at higher altitudes. I have not been able to determine whether the 

 mountaineers are second broods or not." 



Late nestings sometimes occur. Eliot Blackwelder (1916) found 

 a junco nest in the mountains of western Wyoming Sept. 1, 1912 

 "on the ground among flowers and grasses in a straggling grove of 

 spruce trees and at an elevation of 9700 feet above sea. It contained 

 four newly hatched young birds." As 3 inches of snow fell that 

 night and another snowstorm came 5 days later, Blackwelder doubted 

 that the late nesting succeeded at this high elevation. 



Eggs. — Four eggs compose the normal set. J. C. Merrill (1881) 

 collected a set of five. He gives the measm^ements of foiu* in inches 

 as 0.81 by 0.60, 0.80 by 0.59, 0.84 by 0.60, and 0.83 by 0.60; the fifth 

 he broke in blowing. He describes them as follows: "The ground 

 color of three of these eggs is a dull yellowish-white, marked with 

 spots and blotches of light reddish-brown and with a few blotches of 

 lavender. The spots are scattered over the entire surface of the 

 eggs, but are largest and most numerous at the larger end. The 

 ground color of the fourth egg, the largest one, is a rather greenish- 

 white." 



Young. — Edson Fichter (pers. comm.) watched both adults feed 

 the four young in a nest he discovered July 22, 1959. The average 

 time between visits was 4 minutes 12 seconds, and one parent or the 

 other or both averaged 32 seconds at the nest during 10 visits. He 

 adds that the adults removed the fecal sacs; they apparently ate 

 some of the smaller ones, others they carried away and dropped at 

 a distance. 



The adults brought food each time by the same route; alighting in 

 the same small conifer about 8 feet from the nest, they dropped to 

 the ground 2 or 3 feet from the nest and approached it by essentiaUy 

 the same path. When Fichter returned to the nest the next day 

 he found the herbaceous vegetation surrounding and above the nest 

 had been distiu-bed, apparently by cattle, and the approach route 

 was not as consistent as before. Fichter watched the birds on two 

 occasions for more than an hour at a distance of 3K feet from the 



