COUCH'S KINGBIRD 51 



At the time that Baird described this bird (Baird, Cassin, and 

 LaAvrence, 1860), it had not been recorded north of the Mexican 

 border, though it was supposed to range north to the valley of the 

 Rio Grande in Mexico. To George B. Sennett (1878) belongs the 

 honor of adding it to our fauna; he writes: "On May 8th, I saw a 

 number of this species at Lomita Kanch, on the ebony-trees. Three 

 were shot, but only one secured, the others being lost in the tall grass 

 and thickets. At this point is the finest grove of ebonies I saw on 

 the river. On the hillside, back of the buildings, they overlook the 

 large resaca, then filled with tasseled corn. It was the tops of these 

 grand old trees that these Flycatchers loved, and so persistent were 

 they in staying there that I thought they were going to settle in the 

 neighborhood for the season. There was a company of some six or 

 eight scattered about." 



When I visited southern Texas, in 1923, we found Couch's king- 

 bird fairly common during JVIay in Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, 

 where it was breeding. It was one of the characteristic birds of the 

 chaparral, where it was often seen, and oftener heard, in that pigmy 

 forest of mesquite, ebony, retama, granjena, persimmon, madrona, 

 and shittim wood, with an undergrowth of various thorny bushes, 

 such as the fragrant cat's-claw, round-flowered devil's-claw, and that 

 thorniest of all thorny bushes, the Corona christi. A fully fledged 

 young, evidently recently from the nest, was discovered on May 23; 

 its noisy parents were making a great demonstration of anxiety over 

 it. But we did not discover its nest. 



Nesting. — Mr. Sennett's collector, Mr. Bourbois, took what was 

 probably the first set of eggs of this kingbird to be taken north of 

 the Mexican boundary. It was taken, with the parent birds, at 

 Lomita Ranch, on the Rio Grande, Texas, in 1881. Mi\ Sennett 

 (1884) describes the nest as follows: "The nest was situated some 

 twenty feet from the ground, on a small lateral branch of a large 

 elm, in a fine grove not far from the houses of the ranch. It is com- 

 posed of small elm twigs, with a little Spanish moss and a few 

 branchlets and leaves of the growing elm intermixed. The sides of 

 the nest are lined with fine rootlets, the bottom with the black hair- 

 like heart of the Spanish moss. The outside diameter is 6 inches, 

 and the depth 2 inches. The inside diameter is 3 inches, and the 

 depth 1.25 inches." 



A set of five eggs in my collection was taken in Tamaulipas, Mexico, 

 on May 6, 1895, by or for Frank B. Armstrong; the nest was said to 

 be made of Spanish moss, strips of bark, and plant down; it was 

 placed near the end of a limb of a tree in open woods and only 8 

 feet from the ground. 



