404 NOTES ON THE 



modulated. Like all bird songs, it contains immeasurably 

 more than anything to which it can be likened." It is a com- 

 mon summer resident in its favorite localities everywhere with- 

 in the State. 



The collector of skins for his cabinet, finds he has more of 

 that species than he wants to skin, and if a man of true senti 

 ment, enters upon his next slumbers with the shadows of a 

 degree of remorse flittering through his latest memories like 

 bats through the open casement upon a hot night in August. 



They arrive in spring with great regularity about the 10th 

 of May, remainmg until about the 20th of September. The 

 nest is found usually on a limb all the way from five to twenty 

 feet from the ground, and on a sapling in the larger timber. 

 It consists of strips of different kinds of bark, fine grass and 

 delicate weeds. 



These are very artistically arranged into a snug structure, 

 which is made very firm by a secretion from the bird's mouth 

 that glues it solidly together. Down, from vegetable sources, 

 silk from caterpillars' nests, and dry, soft lichens, are glued to 

 the exterior exceedingly neatly, while the nest is lined 

 throughout its deeply hollowed cavity with fine strips of 

 different barks, fine fibrous roots, vegetable down and hairs. 

 They lay four eggs of a cream-white, spattered with spots of 

 reddish-brown and lilac. 



They are very common about Otter Tail, Mille Lacs and Big 

 Stone lake, according to reports from different correspondents, 

 and Dr. Hvoslef embraces them in his notes kindly furnished 

 me from Fillmore county. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Prevailing color black; a central line on the breast, abdomen 

 and under tail coverts, white; some feathers in the latter 

 strongly tinged with dark brown. Bases of all the quills, ex- 

 cept the inner and outer, and basal half of all the tail feathers, 

 except the middle one, a patch on each side of the breast, and 

 the axillary region, orange-red, of a vermilion shade, on the 

 breast. 



Length, 5.25; wing, 2.50; tail, 2.45. 



Habitat, North America. 



