GRAY FLYCATCHER 243 



B. Dixon, however, has sent me data on 17 nests that he has found on 

 the Mono Fhits in Mono County, Calif. He says : "The nests of these 

 birds are the best concealed of any of the flycatchers that I have ever 

 contacted. They usually build their nests in the bases of the dead, 

 winterkilled thornbushes, where the bark has sloughed off and lies 

 piled up in the crotches ; and the nest is so carefully embedded in this 

 debris as to be almost invisible. I have often seen the bird sitting on 

 the nest and flushed it, and could then hardly believe that it was a 

 nest. They sometimes nest in the live thornbushes and sage bushes." 



Russell W. Hendee (1929) records the finding of three nests in 

 Moffat County, in northwestern Colorado. In describing the habitat 

 in which the nests were found, he says that away from the Snake River 

 "the flats are covered with sage, greasewood, and rabbit brush, while 

 the ridges are densely covered with pinyon and juniper." It was 

 in the latter section that the nests were found, of which he says : "The 

 nests were all built from juniper bark and lined with feathers. All 

 of the bark used was carefully gathered from the gray and weathered 

 outside strands, and, with the irregular outlines of the nest, served 

 to make them surprisingly difficult to see. All of the nests were built 

 in forks in juniper trees. The birds were rather noisy and not at 

 all difficult to observe. They were sometimes seen among the sage 

 bushes at some distance from the junipers." 



Alexander Walker (1914) took a nest and three eggs of the gray 

 flycatcher on June 7, 1913, in Crook County, Oreg. The nest was 

 about 2 feet above the ground, in "the crotch of a sage-bush, on a 

 sage and juniper flat"; the nest was "composed of small dead weed 

 stems, plant down, hair, shreds of sage-brush bark and some grasses, 

 quilted together and lined with wool and fine feathers." The parent 

 bird was taken and identified by two of the best ornithologists in 

 the country. 



I have never seen an authentic nest of the gray flycatcher, even in 

 a museum or private collection, but in what published photographs 

 of them I have seen the nests seem to be very bulky and rather loosely 

 constructed externally, with many loose ends projecting and giving 

 them a ragged appearance. If this is characteristic of the species, 

 it might help in distinguishing the nests of the gray flycatcher from 

 those of its near relative, and, in some places, its near neighbor, 

 Wright's flycatcher. 



Eggs. — I have never seen any eggs that I felt sure were laid by the 

 gray flycatcher. The nests found by Mr. Dixon contained either three 

 or four eggs, and he tells me that he has never seen any markings on 

 any of the eggs. Mr. Dawson (1923) gives the number of eggs in a 

 set as three or four and describes them as ovate or short-ovate and 

 pale creamy white. IMr. Walker's set consisted of three eggs, and he 

 describes the color as creamy white. The measurements of 50 eggs 



