152 



THE OOLOGIST. 



they are purposely tougher so that 

 any accidental rolling against the 

 woody sides of the nest will not break 

 them. 



But the nests of the Bush-tit are 

 quite different even though the two 

 birds are often near neighbors in their 

 nest building. From the willow- 

 covered lowlands that border on the 

 coast to the first beginning of the 

 pines will be found the restless, noisy 

 little Bush-tits, the dull grays of their 

 plumage intergrading well with the 

 foliage of the trees and brush through 

 which they hunt insects the whole day 

 long. Most of the Bush-tits, however, 

 retreat to the oak-groves of the hill- 

 sides as the breeding season comes on 

 and there remain until well into- the 

 fall when they with their broods scat- 

 ter out over a greater area in search of 

 food. In the other photo shown here- 

 with, the writer of these lines has just 

 discovered a nest, which an inquisi- 

 tive finger has told him is full of eggs, 

 placed out among the small branches 

 on the extreme end of an oak limb 

 some six feet from the ground. This 

 was about thirty feet from the site of 

 the Wren's nest just described and on 

 the same bit of fiat land in the bottom 

 of a canyon grown up to various trees. 

 This nest as may be seen at a glance 

 at the photo, was a very long one even 

 for this famous builder of pendulous 

 nests, and when one of these is hidden 

 in an oak tree in the manner in which 

 most small birds know how to hide 

 their nests, it is no snap to find it. 



Sets are most usually of from seven 

 to nine eggs, the latter rarely, while 

 some birds, nesting in the same local- 

 ity year after year, lay but five or six, 

 never more. Ninety per cent of the 

 nests, however, contain seven eggs 

 when the sets are full, and so downy 

 and finely made are these nests that 

 hardly a single egg is ever broken 

 either by the wind or by the birds 

 themselves, but I might add that a 



good many are broken by me in get- 

 ting them out of these nests for they 

 are the most easily broken egg in the 

 world, barring none. In fact about 

 the only way to get them out of one of 

 the long, bottle-shaped nests unbroken 

 is to tip the nest upside down on a 

 sheet of cotton and let the eggs roll 

 out, taking a chance that none of them 

 get damaged. This is a bird I never 

 was very "strong" on, either, but they 

 seem to be on the increase of late and 

 I have hopes of adding to my already 

 small series, consisting of seven sets, 

 this season. Nothing to my mind 

 looks prettier, both to the artistic and 

 oological eye than a nice series of 

 Wrens of all species and a well-filled 

 series of Bush-tits in the same drawer; 

 the two always seem to me to belong 

 together more than any two other 

 North American species. 

 Los Angeles, California. 



Breeding of the White-throated Swift. 



(Through the oo irtesy of Prof. Robert H. 

 Wolcott I have before nie a copy of the pro- 

 ceedings of the Nebraska Ornithologist's 

 Union (3rd meeting) and among other inter- 

 esting article*. I find the following written 

 by M. A. Carriker. Jr., of Nebraska City, 

 Nebr. Probably a few of the Ooloaists' read- 

 ers have seen this but in apology we would 

 remind these that hundreds of them have 

 not and as very little has ever been publish- 

 ed about this bird we reproduce the article 

 in full.— Ed.) 



"This interesting bird has for sever- 

 al years been known to be an inhabi- 

 tant of the canons of Sioux and Danes 

 counties and has been supposed to 

 breed there, but until May 30, 1901, 

 no nest or eggs had ever been seen or 

 taken. Indeed very little is known of 

 the breeding of this bird anywhere on 

 account of the usually inaccessible 

 situation which it selects for a nesting 

 site. 



In May, 1900, a party consisting of 

 Mr. G. S. Hunter, Mr. Merritt Gary 

 and Mr. J. C. Crawford, Jr., located a 

 colony of perhaps a dozen pairs of 

 these birds near the head of West 

 Munroe Canon in Sioux County, but 



