b BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



audible slap the alder leaves draped below the doorway, and dis- 

 appeared into the interior. At other times she would take off from 

 a branch above the level of the nest, fall almost vertically downward, 

 turn sharply upward in midair and rise directly to the entrance, de- 

 scribing' a narrow U. Whichever mode of approach she chose, her 

 course was so well calculated from the start that it followed a per- 

 fectly smooth and even curve, without kink or angle." 



He tells me of another nest that he saw under construction at Co- 

 lomba, Guatemala, on July 18, 1935 ; it was 50 feet above the gi-ound 

 at the end of a slender drooping twig of a shade tree in a coffee 

 plantation. This was at an elevation of about 2,600 feet, whereas the 

 nests described above were at an elevation of about 8,500 feet, which 

 is about the altitudinal limit of the species. 



A. J. van Kossem (Dickey and van Eossem, 1938) says of the nests 

 of Sumichrast's becard, as found by him in El Salvador : "The nests 

 are very large structures built of grass and other loose, pliable ma- 

 terial, resembling in type nests of Todirostrum cinereuTn -fmitimum. 

 They are, of course, very much larger, some of them a foot long and 

 eight inches in diameter, not including the long streamers of grass 

 hanging from the lower part. The nest cavity is reached from a 

 hole in the side, the entrance of which is protected by overhanging 

 strands from the sharply sloping roof, and the cup is well padded 

 and felted with the softest possible material. The usual site is the 

 spray of foliage at the end of a long, drooping branch, twenty or 

 thirty feet above the ground and, more often than not, entirely 

 inaccessible." 



There are two sets of eggs of this species in the Thayer collection 

 in Cambridge, collected by W. Leon Dawson on June 16 and 20, 

 1925, near Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico; these are apparently referable to 

 Platypsaris aglaiae alhiventris, as the range of this form is given in 

 the 1931 Check-list. 



In a letter to Colonel Thayer, that came with the eggs, Mr, Dawson 

 has this to say about one of the nests: "Taken June 20, 1925, at a 

 point about 3 miles below Tepic, and half a mile from the bridge. 

 This nest was found on the 10th, at which time it was empty. It was 

 placed 15 feet up and 8 or 10 out in a very slender sapling. The 

 limb from which it depended was so slender and limber that I suc- 

 ceeded on both occasions in bending it in for examination without 

 cutting or breaking. The nest itself was the usual 'bushel basket' of 

 vegetable miscellany, closely compacted, evidently with a view to 

 moisture resistance. It had an unusually flat top, but the entrance 

 hole was well below the middle, and so well concealed that I did not 

 bother to look for it till after I had hauled the nest down, it being 

 always easier and safer to dig a new entrance into the nesting cavity 



