Interior of British North America. 83 



I find no notes concerning them in ray journal, which I have care- 

 fully gone over. The nests which I found were usually, as above 

 noted, in swampy thickets, about six feet from the ground, of about 

 the same size as those of the American Robin, and made much in the 

 same way, of sticks, mud, &c., and lined with hair and fine grass ; 

 they were generally affixed to the contiguous stems of a willow- 

 bush. Now, whether in thus describing the nest I am speaking 

 oiS.ferrugineus or S. cyanocephalus, I am at a loss to know. All 

 I can say is that I obtained the two birds in the same locality ; 

 but one was early in the spring, and the other in June. Whether 

 one is a more northern bird than the other, or whether one builds 

 on the ground, and the other on bushes, I cannot at present 

 undertake to say ; further researches must determine. In the 

 meantime I will observe that I found one or other of these birds 

 common from York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, to the Saskatcha- 

 wan Plains, where they remained till late in October. S. ferru- 

 gineus has been noticed in the ' Fauna Bor.-Ara.,' and Mr. Murray 

 records specimens from Hudson's Bay ; but, except a specimen 

 from Pembina, where the international boundary-line crosses the 

 Red River of the North, which is now in the Smithsonian 

 Institution, S. cyanocephalus had not, I believe, been previously 

 obtained in the interior of British North America. Now that I see 

 Mr. Ross's list, however, I find that he has also procured it on 

 the Mackenzie. 



81. QUISCALUS VERSICOLOR. 



In September I found the Crow Blackbird sparingly between 

 Hudson's Bay and Lake Winipeg, observing the last one on the 

 Lower Saskatchawan on the 4th of October. The following- 

 spring, I did not see this species at Fort Carlton before the last 

 week in April ; so that it is not nearly so early a bird as the 

 Rusty Grackle. M. Bourgeau found the nests clustered together 

 in a willow-thicket, at the end of June, on the Saskatchawan 

 Plains ; they were over six feet above the ground, and no mud was 

 used in their manufacture. One was also found in the old nest 

 of a Magpie. With regard to the peculiar mode of carrying its 

 tail which this bird has during flight, I noticed that it was only 

 done by the males, and that instead of being a twist of the whole 

 tail, as has been supposed, and which it certainly resembles, it is 



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