GRAY KINGBIRD 33 



tinctly well made, compact, and bulky. Rather coarse twigs form 

 the foundation of the nest, and the lining may be of various grasses, 

 sometimes salt-marsh grass if near a locality where this plant is 

 found. 



As to the choice of a nesting tree, the mangrove, usually the red 

 mangrove {Rhiziphora mangle)^ is almost invariably chosen through- 

 out the bird's range in Florida. Where the species penetrates and 

 this tree does not, an oak is usually taken, the stiff twigs of which form 

 excellent support for the frail nest. The mangrove occurs as far 

 up the east coast of Florida as New Smyrna and Daytona, and it is 

 here that one usually encounters the first gray kingbirds on the way 

 south. On my frequent trips to Florida, I never think about watch- 

 ing the wires along the road for this species until I reach Daytona, 

 and the birds are fairly common in that town itself. 



Low altitudes are to be expected in view of the favored growths. 

 While the mangrove reaches considerable height along the southwest 

 coast of Florida, the birds seem consistently to prefer the normal 

 types and build no higher than 10 to 12 feet from the ground or, 

 as is often the case, over the water. Many nests are no more than 

 3 or 4 feet up. Variations will, of course, occur. The two greatest 

 recorded elevations I can discover are those of a nest seen by Dr. 

 Wetmore (Wetmore and Swales, 1931) near Const anza, Haiti, which 

 was 40 feet from the ground on the limb of a lofty pine. The other 

 was a nest found by J. H. Riley (1905) on Abaco Island, Bahamas, 

 which was "about 50 feet high in a pine." 



Strong attachment is exhibited by the gray kingbird for a nesting 

 site. Weston has noted that "apparently a pair of birds returns to 

 the same tree or the same clump of trees year after year, for several 

 nests in progressive stages of decay are usually found within an area 

 of a few square yards." In the account of a nesting many years ago 

 in South Carolina, Dr. John Bachman stated that the birds returned 

 year after year to the same clump of trees in Charleston to build. 



In his full notes on this species, Weston (MS.) mentions another 

 possible habit as follows : "Egg destruction may be imputed against 

 this species from a single circumstantial instance noted on July 25, 

 1928. A nest containing three eggs was found on July 9. As it 

 turned out later, another pair of birds had built less than 30 feet away 

 on the far side of a small dune. On July 25, the known nest was found 

 to have been deserted and all three eggs had been punctured as by the 

 beak of a bird, while in the second nest (just then discovered) were 

 well-grown young birds. The inference is that the established pair 

 had destroyed the eggs of the intruders." 



The only authentic nesting records of the gray kingbird outside of 

 Florida have been for South Carolina and Georgia. So far as South 

 Carolina is concerned, the known nesting dates are many years apart, 



