138 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



from the ground, from twenty to fifty feet. They seem to breed 

 rather late, as Mr. Howard secured a set on June 17, 1902, and on 

 July 25 I shot a young bird which had only just left the nest." 



O. W. Howard (1899), who has probably had more experience with 

 the nesting habits of this flycatcher than anyone else, says that al- 

 though the birds are numerous, the nests are very hard to find; in 

 four season's collecting he was unable to take an egg. One nest with 

 young was placed in a natural cavity in an ash tree about 20 feet 

 from the ground. Another nest was placed only 15 feet up in a 

 dead oak stump in a deserted woodpecker's hole; this was deserted 

 before the set was complete. "The nest was composed almost entirely 

 of rabbit's fur with a few tail and wing feathers of jays sticking 

 upright around the outer edge." He mentions a nest found by F. C. 

 Willard in a natural cavity in a sycamore 40 feet from the ground. 



Evidently Mr. Howard was more successful later on, for there are 

 two of his sets, with the nests, in the Thayer collection in Cambridge ; 

 these were collected in the Huachuca Mountains on June 13, 1901, 

 and June 8, 1902. The first nest was only 4 feet from the ground 

 in a natural cavity in an oak stump where the tree had been broken 

 off; it is a small nest made of fine grasses and lined with still finer 

 grasses and hairs. The other one was in a deserted woodpecker's 

 hole in a dead upright limb of an oak, 20 feet from the ground; it 

 consists of a bulky mass of plant rubbish, straws, grasses, weed stems 

 and tops, dead leaves, strips of bark, cow's hair, fur, and feathers; 

 in the center it is lined with a felted mass of rabbit's fur. 



Eggs. — Four or five eggs constitute the usual set for the olivaceous 

 flycatcher. The eggs are usually ovate and only slightly glossy. 

 The ground color is pale "cream color" or creamy white, and the 

 markings, in various shades of browns, purples, and pale drabs, are 

 much like those on the eggs of the ash-throated flycatcher but are 

 rather finer. They are the smallest and, on the average, the most 

 lightly marked of any of the eggs of the North American species of 

 this group. The measurements of 43 eggs average 19.6 by 15.2 milli- 

 meters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 21.6 by 16.2, 

 21.0 by 16.4, 17.6 by 14.4, 18.2 by 14.2 millimeters. 



Plumages. — I have not seen any very young birds, but what im- 

 mature birds I have examined are browner on the upper parts than 

 adults and the under parts are paler ; the abdominal region, which is 

 light yellow, "primrose yellow" in the adult, is almost white or 

 faintly tinged with yellow; the greater and median wing coverts, 

 secondaries and tertials are broadly edged with "cinnamon"; and 

 the rectrices are much more broadly edged on both webs with "cin- 

 namon-rufous" than in the adult. I have not been able to trace the 

 post] u venal molt. June and July adults that I have seen are in 



