86 BULLETIN 135;, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



swinging on the reed tops and pouring out their curious half-musical 

 notes, where the bubbling notes of the marsh ^VTens greeted us from 

 the dense growth below and where the deadly moccasin lurked in the 

 morass under foot. Had we cared to explore such places more thor- 

 oughly we doubtless could have found many more nests. In a small 

 slough, about 30 yards square, on Merritt's Island, full of large tus- 

 socks of tall grass, as high as a man's head, we found two nests of 

 the least bittern and five nests of the boat-tailed grackle. The bit- 

 terns nests were merely crude platforms or shallow baskets of coarse 

 straws and grasses in the densest parts of the large tussocks. One 

 was 24 and one 30 inches above the shallow water; the nests meas- 

 ured 7 by 4 and 7 by 5 inches, and held four eggs each on April 26. 



Near Brownsville, Texas, we found several nests of the least bit- 

 tern on May 23, 1923, in a marshy pond where the Mexican grebes 

 were nesting. The bitterns' nests were in small clumps of tall cat- 

 tail flags; some were the usual nests of dead flags and others were 

 partially or wholly made of twigs of the water huisache, which was 

 growing in the pond. George Finlay Simmons (1915a) describes 

 another Texas nest, as follows: 



The nest was supported by several rushes, dead reeds, and the broken stem of 

 a small persimmon sapling growing in the pond. At this point the reeds and 

 rushes were not so thick, and the nest and eggs could easily be seen at a dis- 

 tance of 15 or 20 feet. The bottom of the nest just touched the water, which 

 was there about 18 inches deep. The nest itself was quite firmly built, with few 

 loose ends projecting from the mass. It was built entirely of straight stems and 

 twigs of a brushy reed which grows about the ponds, quite different from the 

 flexible reeds and rushes used in the construction of the nests of the other water 

 birds of the region. It measured about 6J^ inches across the top and 5 inches 

 high, being cone shaped and tapering towards the bottom. So flat was the top 

 of the nest that it seemed the slightest jar would cause the eggs to roll oflF, for 

 there were no rushes or grasses to guard the sides of the nest as in the case of 

 the rails and gallinules. 



Eggs. — The least bittern lays ordinarily four or five eggs, some- 

 times six and very rarely seven. Richard C. Harlow writes to me : 



I have examined probably 50 of their nests; probably 70 per cent of the 

 complete sets are five in number, though I have inspected seven nests holding 

 sets of six and one of seven, all undoubtedly laid by the same bird. 



The eggs are quite uniformly oval in shape, rarely showing a ten- 

 dency towards elliptical oval or ovate. The shell is smooth but not 

 glossy. The color is bluish white or greenish white. The measure- 

 ments of 58 eggs average 31 by 23.5 millmeters; the eggs showing 

 the four extremes measure 33 by 25, 28 by 23.5 and 29 by 22.5 milli- 

 meters. 



Young. — Both sexes incubate and the period of incubation is said 

 to be 16 or 17 days. Ira N. Gabrielson (1914) gives a very good 

 account of how the parents brood over and feed their young, which 

 he observed from a blind, as follows: 



