Nesting of the Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) in 

 Eastern Pennsylvania 



BY W. E. ROBERTS AND W. E. HANNUM 



A PAIR of Mockingbirds were seen by myself on June 17, 

 1901, in Solebury township, Bucks county, Pa., about my 

 home, two and a half miles west from New Hope, and a mile in 

 a direct line from the Delaware River. I noticed them fly 

 out from an osage hedge that extended past my home. I had 

 never seen any birds there that were marked like these, and 

 upon looking them up in a Warren's " Birds of Pennsylvania," 

 I found that they were Mockingbirds. My brother had seen 

 this pair two days earlier than I, and my father had also seen 

 them flying about the hedge before that. This road by the 

 hedge marks a divide between two creek valleys. It is possible 

 that the birds followed one or the other of the streams and 

 found conditions so to their liking that they stayed to nest. 

 The pair seemed tame, flew about our yard among the pine 

 trees and were undisturbed by the wagons passing by. As I 

 was occupied in the daytime during the birds' stay, I usually 

 had an opportunity to observe them only in the early morning 

 or evening. This accounts for the lack of more detailed informa- 

 tion. I do not know when nest building was begun. I thought 

 from the actions of the birds that it must be going on however; 

 so on July 7, at my first opportunity for search, I found the nest 

 about thirty yards from the house on the north side of the low 

 thick hedge. It then had the full complement of four eggs and 

 was about four feet from the ground and probably six inches 

 below the top of the hedge. Sticks Uned with horse hair com- 

 posed the nest. There was no difficult}' in discovering its loca- 

 tion, for the male himself showed where it was, flying to a par- 



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