168 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



inches in height, the inner cup being 2% inches by 1% inches in depth. This 

 is a compactly built structure, the materials composing it being well worked 

 together, and It is warmly lined with cattle hair. 



Before the advent of man-made structures, the primitive nesting 

 sites of Say's phoebe were evidently on shelves or in crevices of rocky 

 cliffs, protected from the weather by overhanging rock, on ledges in 

 caves, in natural cavities in trees, or in holes in vertical or overhang- 

 ing banks. Many pairs still nest in such situations, especially in 

 uninhabited regions and in the far north. There is a set of eggs in 

 my collection that was taken from a hole in a bank, well sheltered 

 from rain, as the rim of the nest was flush with the face of the bank. 

 But after the coming of man, it did not take the birds long to learn to 

 take advantage of the new, and often more secure, nesting sites of- 

 fered. Abandoned mine shafts and old wells took the place of 

 caves. Harry S. Swarth (1929) says: "At our camp on the Ashburn 

 Ranch [southern Arizona] a pair of Say Phoebes had a nest in a 

 well, built in a crevice in the dirt wall about 15 feet down. This is 

 a favorite nesting site with the species in this region and I have seen 

 a number of nests similarly placed, in wells or in mine shafts." R. 

 T. Congdon has sent me a photograph of a nest located 15 feet under 

 ground, at the bottom of the well-like shaft of an old irrigation flume, 

 where an inverted siphon formerly carried water under a railroad 

 track. Another of his photographs show^s a nest in a lard pail 

 inserted in the stovepipe hole of a chimney in a deserted forest cabin. 

 While in Arizona, in 1922, Frank Willard photographed a nest in 

 an old mail box on a post by a roadside. 



As indicated above Say's phoebe occasionally appropriates the nest 

 of some other species, sometimes driving away the rightful owners. 

 E. S. Cameron (1907) writes from Montana: 



In May, 1895, a pair took possession of a Barn Swallow's nest in the stable 

 and forced the rightful owners, which were renovating it, to build an entirely 

 new one affixed to a beam. In 1904, a pair of Say's Phoebes nested below the 

 eyrie of the Golden Eagles and were unmolested. Another pair which, in 1906, 

 built in a hole near the Prairie Falcon's eyrie (on one of the higliest buttes along 

 the Yellowstone) were killed by the latter for their young. In May, 1907, a 

 still more remarkable site chosen by these flycatchers was the old abode of a 

 Cliff Swallow ; one of several nests situated above a wolf -den in a huge sand 

 rock. The den was inhabited by a she-wolf with her six pups, and the birds 

 were exposed to constant disturbance, both from these animals and from men 

 who suffocated the young wolves with a pitch pine fire. The she-wolf escaped 

 with one ten-weeks-old pup and intermittent efforts were made to trap her at 

 the den. Nevertheless the flycatchers did not desert their nest." 



Eggs. — Say's phoebe lays ordinarily four or five eggs, sometimes as 

 few as three, and very rarely as many as six or seven. The eggs 

 vary from ovate to short-ovate and have little or no gloss. They are 

 usually pure white, but occasionally one or more eggs in a set may 



