128 BULLETIN 179, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



retreat. On May 16 I flushed a male from a nest and six eggs, a 

 circumstance making it probable that the male assists in the duties 

 of incubation." 



There are six sets of eggs of the Mexican crested flycatcher in 

 my collection, all taken by F. B. Armstrong near Brownsville, Tex., 

 between April 28 and May 14; one of the nests was in a hole in a 

 fencepost, and the others were in cavities in trees at heights varying 

 from 5 to 12 feet above ground. 



A nest in the Thayer collection was taken from an old woodpecker's 

 hole, 10 feet up in a pine tree, in British Honduras ; it was made of 

 palmetto fibers, feathers of a dove, and a piece of snakeskin. Snake- 

 skin, apparently, does not figure so largely in the nests of this fly- 

 catcher as it does in the nests of our northern crested flycatcher. 



Eggs. — The Mexican crested flycatcher lays three to six eggs, 

 five being the commonest number. The eggs are practically indis- 

 tinguishable from those of the Arizona crested flycatcher; they are 

 much like the eggs of the northern crested flycatcher, but usually 

 somewhat less heavily marked. The measurements of 50 eggs average 

 22.9 by 17.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes meas- 

 ure 25.2 by 20.1, 19.8 by 17.0, and 21.8 by 16.5 millimeters. 



The molts and plumages, food, and general habits of this bird 

 do not differ materially from those of other crested flycatchers. It 

 is only a summer resident within our borders, which forms the 

 northern limit of its range, arriving early in April and departing 

 during the latter part of September. 



MYIAKCHUS CINERASCENS CINERASCENS (Lawrence) 

 ASH-THROATED FLYCATCHER 



Plates 12, 13 



HABITS 



The ash-throated flycatcher is widely distributed in western North 

 America, breeding as far north as Washington (rarely), as far east 

 as central Colorado, and thence southward into Mexico, from north- 

 ern Lower California eastward to Tamaulipas. Over much of this 

 area it is a common bird, and in some regions it is really abundant. 

 Major Bendire (1895) remarked that climatic conditions do not seem 

 to affect it to any extent, for it is as much at home in the mountain 

 fastnesses of the southern Sierra Nevadas, at an altitude of 9,000 

 feet, as in Death Valley, probably the hottest place in the United 

 States. He found these birds rather common in Arizona and said 

 of their haunts there : "Their favorite haunts were the denser mesquite 

 thickets in the creek bottoms, oak groves along hillsides, and the 



