256 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



in color, of a small low growing weed. These are held together with 

 cobwebs. The lining is of fine grass, rootlets, and hair, with a few 

 feathers near the rim, which is slightly incurved like a humming- 

 bird's nest. It is rather insecurely fastened with cobwebs to the 

 branch on which it rests. In appearance, it is much like a Western 

 Gnatcatcher's {Polio'ptila caerulea ohscura) nest." 



K. D. Lusk (1901) writes of a nest that he found in the Chiricahua 

 Mountains, Arizona : 



Very early one morning, June 16 I saw the female fly repeatedly from the 

 ground on the hill-side to the same limb of a large sycamore about which they had 

 spent much time. * * * The female did all the worli. The nest was placed 

 in an Inclined fork among the thick branches, pretty well up, about 35 feet. 

 It was well-constructed, compact, deep, of dried grasses, a few vegetable fibers, 

 plenty of spider's silk and into the lining were woven a few bright feathers. 

 Two nests found this last season also contained several bright feathers, one of 

 them, bright yellow ones of the Audubon's Warbler (D. auduhoixi) , a blue one 

 of the Chestnut-backed Bluebird (Sialia m. hairdi) and a barred feather of the 

 Whip-poor-will {Antrostomus v. macrcmiystax) fluttering on the edge of the 

 nest. 



He also found this flycatcher "breeding in a virgin forest of pines 

 and firs, among the trees surrounding a little 'park', or treeless, open 

 space, of which there are many in these mountains." It was near 

 the summit of the range. "But not one of the nests found in this 

 upper location was built upon a limb, but all against the trunks of 

 the trees, 20 to 35 feet from the ground, in two cases in the angle 

 of a short dead stub and in two cases with only a tiny jutting piece of 

 bark for support or a slight depression caused by a wound in the tree. 

 To this there was one exception * * * where it was located far 

 out on the limb of a large fir." 



There are five nests of the buff-breasted flycatcher in the Thayer 

 collection in Cambridge, all collected by Virgil W. Owen in the 

 Chiricahua Mountains. One was in an oak tree on the edge of a 

 bank above a stream ; it was in a slanting crotch and was partly sup- 

 ported by another branch. Two were in sycamores : one only 9 feet 

 from the ground, saddled on a small, dead branch close to where it 

 joined a live limb, and partly supported by dead twigs; the other 

 well out on a limb and well concealed in a bunch of leaves, 25 feet 

 from the ground. The other two were in pines : one 15 feet up and 

 12 feet out on a limb, in a fork and against a bunch of needles; the 

 other 45 feet from the ground and 10 feet out from the trunk near 

 the end of a small limb. 



These nests are all similar to those described above, neatly and 

 compactly made and deeply cupped ; the material consists of various 

 plant fibers, cottony substances, fine grasses, fine rootlets, weed blos- 

 soms, seed heads, and bits of dried leaves, all bound together and to 



