106 



THK OSPREY. 



NEST OF THE KED-EYED YIKEO. 

 THROUGH THE COURTESY OF THE OUTLOOK. 



have heard the inspiriting', "Grea' deal," 

 the morning" call of E. trail Hi ^ quite as 

 often as elsewhere in the central part of 

 the State, while I have a ver}- fair series 

 of sets of eg-gs. with nests, personally 

 taken in various parts of Central South- 

 ern Minnesota. (In speaking- of this 

 race, it may not be amiss to state thnt 

 E. t. ahionini is the race that breeds in 

 Northern Minnesota.) 



Mr. Mitchell states that the Least Fly- 

 catcher "never saddles its nest horizon- 

 tally" to the branch whereon it is placed. 

 Now, in late June, of '93, in Steele 

 County, Minn., I once found a most deli- 



cate and Contop- 

 us-like nest, far 

 out near the end 

 of a horizontal 

 branch, snug^g^led 

 into the center of 

 a thick cluster of 

 uprig-ht sprouts. 

 Two miles or so 

 from the spot in 

 question, in the 

 same season, I 

 found a similarly 

 situated nest far 

 out on the hori- 

 zontal limb of a 

 tall ash-tree, and 

 nearly five feet out 

 from the trunk. 

 Truly, it is a dan- 

 g-erous thing- to 

 use the "universal 

 neg-ative" in the 

 domain of orni- 

 tholog-y. I fear Mr. 

 Mitchell never 

 went asearching- 

 among- the poplars 



yfor nests of the 

 Least Flycatcher, 

 or that, if he did, 

 the cunning- simu- 

 lation which 

 this bird uses 

 in such locations, must have proven an 

 effectual concealment. Nowhere does 

 this least of the Euipidonaces so frequent 

 as among- the poplars, at the base of 

 whose basal branches it saddles its knot- 

 like nests, of semi-lichenous substances, 

 so smartly and so deftly placed as to elude 

 most successfully the casual observer. 



I mig-ht speak of this bird's habit of 

 nesting- in bushes, near the g-round, here 

 in Northern Minnesota, even where the 

 poplars abound; but, as Rudyard Kip- 

 ling^ says, "that's another story," and be- 

 sides, I hear the ominous "snip" of The 

 OsPKEY scissors, and so I stop. 



A Nest of the Red-eyed Vireo. 



THE g-reat relig-ious paper edited by 

 Dr. Lyman Abbott, 77/^ Outlook, 

 feels prv)ud that a Red-eyed Vireo 

 should d> cide to "take" their p-nper, or at 

 least take a portion of it, as is in evidence 



in the beautiful photog-raph published in 

 this number of The Ospkey throug-h the 

 kindreds of 7/ie Oiit/ook. 



Mr. Chas. F. Wing-ate, of Twilig-ht Park 

 in the Caslkills, N. Y., writes as follows: 



