130 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Of six nests that Mr. Willard and I recorded in Arizona, one 

 was in a hole in a post 4 feet from the ground ; one was in an old 

 cactus wren's nest 8 feet up in a mesquite bush; one was in a cavity 

 in an old mescal stub, open at the top and only 3 inches deep; 

 another was in the dry stalk of a mescal, probably an old wood- 

 pecker's nest, 7 feet from the ground ; and the other two were in the 

 abandoned nests of woodpeckers in the saguaros. All these nests were 

 made of hair and fur from cattle, deer, or rabbits, with a little dry 

 grass in the foundation; they made soft, warm beds for the young; 

 none of them contained snakeskins. Mr. Willard also recorded two 

 very low nests in holes in mescal stalks ; one was 3 feet and one only 

 2% feet from the ground. There is an entirely different type of 

 nest in the Thayer collection in Cambridge, collected by W. W. 

 Brown, Jr., in Sonora ; it was 5 feet from the ground in a hole in a 

 tree and was made entirely of dead, gray grasses and was lined 

 with finer grasses and hairs ; it looks as if the flycatchers had appro- 

 priated an old nest of some other species. 



The ash-throated flycatcher nests in a great variety of situations 

 in addition to those named above; evidently there are not enough 

 natural cavities in trees or old woodpecker holes available to satisfy 

 its requirements; so it is forced to select any opening it can find 

 that is large enough to hold its nest, often on or near human habi- 

 tations or in man-made structures, such as a drain pipe from the 

 eaves of a house, an old tin can or pot, a hole in a fencepost, a bird 

 box, empty mail box, or any other boxlike opening. If the cavity 

 is small, the nest is squeezed into it ; if it is too large, the extra space 

 is filled in with rubbish. Sometimes the birds show more energy 

 than good judgment in the selection of a nest site. Fred Gallup 

 (1917), of Escondido, Calif., hung an old pair of overalls on a line 

 to dry; a pair of these birds began carrying in nesting material 

 through a hole in one leg, but it fell out at the bottom of the leg as 

 fast as they carried it in ; they kept at the hopeless job for about an 

 hour, until Mr. Gallup tied up the bottom of the leg. They finally 

 succeeded in filling up the leg with material, lined the nest with 

 feathers, and raised a brood of young. 



Wilson C. Hanna (1931) tells a remarkable story of a pair of these 

 flycatchers that built a nest and raised a brood of young "in the boom 

 of a gasolene engine shovel which had been in operation almost 

 every day in loading clay." The nest was "down three feet in a 

 cavity on the underside of the boom and well out toward the end." 

 The boom moved, of course, with every shovelful of clay. The site 

 may have been selected when the shovel was not in operation, and 

 the birds were courageous enough to stick by their eggs or young. 

 The most remarkable part of the story is that, although the birds may 



