XANTUS'S BECARD O 



material. There were many pieces of fibrous bark of various kinds, 

 dry and partially disintegrated; a wiry length of orange-colored 

 dodder vine; many long, dead pine needles; many yellow spider 

 cocoons and tufts of spiders' silk; many tufts of sheep wool, a few 

 downy feathers, some thistledown, a few pieces of green moss, some 

 slender, dry vine stems, a coiled tendril, a piece of the fabric of a 

 bushtit's nest, probably of last year. The thickness of the walls 

 varied from II/2 to 214 inches, and the interior cavity, as large as my 

 fist, was lined chiefly with thistledown and fibrous bark. 



"Three days later I found that the becards, in no way discouraged 

 by their disaster, had begun a new nest in another tree in the same 

 clump, only 20 feet from the site of their first ill-fated attempt. But 

 alas poor becards. Their second nest followed the first in disaster. 

 Their inexorable enemy, if it was the same, had climbed the tree and 

 chopped down the supporting branch. 



"But the becards were as dauntless and as full of hope as Nature 

 herself. They set about at once to build a third nest in the very tree 

 where the second had met with disaster, directly below the position of 

 the last. In a week it reached its full size. This time they had better 

 luck and succeeded in completing the nest and laying the eggs. The 

 construction of the great globular nest of the becards was a very large 

 undertaking for birds no bigger than a sparrow, and as usual in such 

 cases they continued to be preoccupied with it until the eggs hatched. 

 Almost eveiy time that the female returned to her eggs after a brief 

 recess she carried back some bit of material to add to her already 

 bulky structure. The entrance to the completed nest was at the bot- 

 tom, a little to one side of the center. Just how the aperture com- 

 municated with the interior, and what arrangement there was to 

 prevent the eggs rolling out when the bough swayed in the wind, it 

 was impossible to determine without taking down the structure. 



"The brown becard's periods on the eggs, as well as her recesses, 

 were of variable duration, but usually brief. I watched her in all 

 kinds of weather, but mostly bad, and found her one of the most 

 restless sitters I have ever known. Her periods in the nest, during a 

 day and a half, ranged from 3 to 38 minutes, with an average of 12. 

 Half of her sessions lasted 8 minutes or less. Her recesses fluctuated 

 from 2 to 19 minutes, with an average of 8^/^. At the end of the 

 incubation period she remained no more constantly in the nest than 

 at the beginning. 



"To enter the downward-facing entrance, with no perch or point 

 of support below it, was not an easy matter, but the bird accom- 

 plished the feat with admirable skill. Sometimes she started from 

 a perch below and to one side of the nest, inclined her course sharply 

 upward until it was vertical as she neared her goal, hit with an 



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