4 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



nest, nearly a foot in diameter. When I first noticed it, in February, 

 it appeared old and weathered, and seemed to have l^een constructed 

 the previous year. 



"On the morning of April 20, as I passed by the marshy opening, 

 something falling from the old nest caught my eye, and looking up- 

 ward I beheld the male becard clinging to the structure and attempt- 

 ing to pull a fragment from it. He flew off with some shreds of 

 material in his bill and carried them to a new nest, only recently 

 begun, a sprawling weft of varied constituents attached to several 

 of the fine twiglets at the tip of a slender branch, a few yards from 

 the old structure and very slightly lower. Working with him was 

 another bird of the same size, which was without doubt his mate, 

 although her plumage was strikingly different from his. 



"A week later I returned to watch the becards continue their task. 

 The new nest was now nearly of the size of the old one when first 

 I found it, a roughly globular structure, higher than wide, provided 

 with two entrances, one facing the east, the other the south. Mean- 

 while the becards had pulled at the old nest until every trace had 

 fallen or had been incorporated in the new. In the remains on the 

 ground I found fibrous plant stems, much gray lichen, spider cocoons, 

 thistledown, and sheep wool. 



"After another week (the second since the structure was begun) 

 I found the becards putting the finishing touches on their commodious 

 nest. They had closed up the aperture on the southern side, leaving 

 only that which looked upon the rising sun as their permanent en- 

 trance. Black bird and brown bird continued to bring material as 

 from the first, but their manner of disposing of it was not very dif- 

 ferent. In an hour and a quarter the female came 24 times with 

 material for the nest, among which were pine needles, long fibers, 

 and downy substances. Twenty times she went directly into the nest 

 with her burden, flying skillfully through the entrance without alight- 

 ing first on the exterior. Thrice she deposited long fibers on the roof, 

 and once she worked them into the side of the nest. 



"The male brought material only 13 times, and everything he car- 

 ried, whether fibrous or downy, he added to the roof of the nest. I 

 did not see him enter even once. His desire to be close to his mate 

 was far stronger than his instinct to aid her in her work, and he ac- 

 companied her trips to and from the nest oftener than he brought 

 anything in his bill." 



A-fter the birds had been working on the nest for over 2 weeks, 

 and before the nest was quite finished, the tree was cut down and Mr. 

 Skutch had a chance to examine the fallen nest. "It measured a foot 

 in height and 9 inches in transverse diameter. The most conspicuous 

 constitutent throughout was a kind of long, slender, much-branched 

 gray lichen, which accounted for three-quarters of the bulk of the 



