282 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Major Bendire (1895) challenged this statement, as being quite at 

 variance with his experience, and said : "If the Western Wood Pewee 

 places its nest occasionally in a crotch, which I do not deny, it is ex- 

 ceptional and not the rule." There is, however, some more recent evi- 

 dence that this pewee does occasionally build its nest in an upright 

 crotch. INIr. Dawson (1923) says that "occasionally the nest is set 

 in an upright crotch of a willow or some dead sapling." And J. A. 

 Munro (1919) says of the nests found in British Columbia: "They 

 are usually built saddle fashion on a rather large limb, generally 

 at a crotch, but I have found two that were built in upright forks 

 like a Yellow Warbler's nest. These two nests were in half-dead 

 peach trees in an orchard." 



Major Bendire (1895) quotes Charles E. Aiken as saying: "I 

 have found several settled in the angle formed by the trunk of the 

 tree and a horizontal branch, and in one instance, where a large 

 limb had been torn from the tree by the wind, a nest was placed 

 flatly upon a broad, board-like splinter." 



John W. Mailliard (1921) had some favorable opportunities to 

 watch some western wood pewees at their nest building activities, 

 of which he writes : 



One female gathered its building material by pecking small bits of bark 

 from the branches of a dead willow, which was but a few yards from the 

 large yellow pine in which the nest was placed. At times small bits of this 

 material could be distinguished in the bill of the busy bird, while at other 

 times nothing was discerned, the presence of such only being evidenced by the 

 operations of the bird upon its return to the nest. Meantime the male 

 perched in the near vicinity, or darted after its prey, sometimes perching 

 in, or darting from, the very tree in which the nest was being con- 

 structed. • • • 



Building operations seemed to consist solely in a constant pecking-weaving 

 process, and the shaping of the nest was accomplished by the bird twisting 

 its body while in the nest, and arching its neck so that its throat was over 

 the rim and against the side of the nest. The head was then moved back and 

 forth along the rim much as one sharpens a razor on a strop. With a similar 

 effect the tail was often throvpn down and compressed against the outside of 

 the nest, but no lateral motion could ever be discerned. 



Another pair built three nests in rapid succession. The first nest 

 was destroyed by a storm, and a new nest was built and the first egg 

 laid within eight days; this nest, with its three eggs, was collected. 

 The third nest was constructed and the first egg laid in it within 

 seven days. All the nests were within a few rods of the first site, and 

 all in aspens. 



The measurements of four nests before me show considerable 

 variation in outside diameter, from 4 to 2i/^ inches, but the inside 

 diameter is more constant at about 2 inches ; the outside height varies 

 from 11/2 to 1% inches, and the depth of the inner cavity from 1 to 

 1^4 inches. 



