216 BULLETIN 179, UNITED STATES NATIONAL RIUSEUM 



the redstart. It is deeply cupped, the walls are rather thin, hardly 

 any material intervening between them and the supporting forks, 

 and the upper rim is often somewhat incurved. The body of the 

 nest is made of shreds of the inner bark of trees, shredded bark of 

 coarse weeds, bits of string and paper, fine weed stems and grasses, 

 the dried blossoms of weeds and grasses, thistledown and the down 

 from cottonwoods and ferns, cotton, shreds of rope, spider webs and 

 cocoons, and various other vegetable fibers and rubbish. The rim is 

 neatly finished off with the finest of the fibers and grasses, firmly 

 interwoven or pressed down into place. The cup is smoothly lined 

 with the finest of grasses, cow's hair or horsehair, thistle, milkweed, 

 dandelion, willow, or cottonwood down, and a few feathers. Nests 

 that I have measured vary from 3 to 2^/^ inches in outer diameter; 

 from 2 to 1% inches in inner diameter; in outside height from 21^ 

 to 1% inches; and the inner cavity varied from 1^ to I14 inches in 

 depth. 



Eggs. — Bendire (1895) says that the number of eggs laid by the 

 least flycatcher varies from three to six, usually four, and that one 

 is deposited daily. I have never seen more than four eggs in a nest 

 and think that any larger numbers must be rare. A set of seven, re- 

 ported by Dr. Dickey (MS.), was apparently the product of two 

 females. The eggs are ovate, short-ovate, or rounded ovate and are 

 not glossy. They are creamy white and unmarked. The measure- 

 ments of 50 eggs average 16.1 by 12.9 millimeters; the eggs showing the 

 four extremes measure 17.8 by 12.2, 16.8 by 15.0, 15.0 by 12.7, and 15.2 

 by 11.4 millimeters. 



Young. — The period of incubation is said to be 12 daj's. Probably 

 both sexes incubate; some observers state so positively, and others 

 are more or less in doubt about it. But certainly both parents assist 

 in the feeding and care of the young, for both have been seen at 

 the nest together. Often, if not regularly in the southern portion 

 of its range, two broods are raised in a season; and sometimes the 

 second brood is raised in the same crotch. 



Ralph Hoffmann (1901) removed an empty nest after the 3^oung 

 had left it, and says: "When the young had been out two days, and 

 were being fed constantly by the male, I saw the female fly to the 

 empty crotch, where the old nest had been. In a moment she 

 repeated her visit, and when I walked to the tree, I saw the skeleton 

 of a new nest already completed. Two days later the nest was fin- 

 ished. It was interesting to note that the beginning of the new 

 series of instinctive acts involved in raising a second brood did not 

 destroy the force of the last series, for when the nest was finished 

 the female returned to help the male feed the first brood." 



