48 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



see about half a dozen black-necked stilts, long slender birds, very 

 striking in appearance and actions, the jet black wings contrasting 

 finely with the pure white under parts and the long pink legs trailing 

 behind. They seemed so much concerned, so unwilling to leave, and 

 kept up such an incessant racket, that we felt sure that they were 

 nesting: there. A short search soon revealed two of their nests, both 

 very conspicuously placed. The first nest, containing four quite 

 heavily incubated eggs, was very prettily located under a little red 

 mangrove root, just as it entered the ground; a hollow had been 

 scraped in the sand and profusely lined with small bits of shell and 

 pieces of dry sticks. The second nest was in plain sight on the 

 open beach of finely broken shell in a small colony of least terns' 

 nests, the three dark-colored eggs showing up very conspicuously 

 on the white sand. The nest cavity measured six inches outside 

 and four inches inside and was lined with pieces of shell, sticks, and 

 fish bones, an odd and uncomfortable bed for the young. Besides 

 the least terns, Wilson plovers were nesting close by, rather an 

 unusual association for the marsh-loving stilts. 



Gilbert R. Kossignol writes to me of a colony of some 23 nests 

 that he found in a somewhat similar location on an island in Lake 

 Kissimmee, Florida, on April 14, 1908. " The nests were all built 

 high upon the gravelly beach and were lined with bits of fresh- 

 water snails." This colony was wiped out later by a rise of water 

 in the lake. 



Herbert W. Brandt has sent me some notes on this species as he 

 found it breeding in Kleberg County, Texas, on May 28, 1919. He 

 found seven nests in a colony of about ten pairs on " a watery, 

 marsh}'' meadow covering about a square mile, the water being 6 to 

 12 inches deep." He describes one of the nests as "composed of 

 sticks made up into a floating platform, about four inches high 

 and well made. The lining was small sticks and the top basin 

 shallow and nicely made. The water, exceedingly high from recent 

 rains, was up to the eggs, so that the nest was wet." I saw a similar 

 colony near Brownsville, Tex. 



Near Los Bancs, California, stilts were nesting all over the flooded 

 meadows, on little hummocks, on the muddy islands, and along the 

 margins of ponds. On the drier shores and banks the nests were 

 very simple structures, hollows in the ground, lined with small 

 twigs, weed stems, and grasses; but in the wet places, where they 

 were liable to be flooded, they were quite elaborately elevated to 

 considerable heights. Mr. Dawson (1923) writes: 



It is when the water rises that the birds rise to the occasion, and get busy 

 with nest building. Sedges, sticks, water plants with clinging soil, anything 

 movable, is seized and forced under the threatened eggs. Indeed, so appre- 



