60 EGG CHECK LIST OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 
eggs (sometimes four), pale blue, turning to a lighter shade after being 
blown. Like all other birds, their eggs vary somewhat in size. I am 
positive they raise two, if not three, broods during the season, as I have 
found a nest with fresh eggs as late as July 7th.” 
Mr. Nehrling writes me that this is not a very common bird in Texas, 
but is quite regularly distributed. ‘‘It arrives from its winter quarters about 
the 20th of April, and commences nesting about the middle of May. The 
nests discovered were always built in blackberry bushes, along road-sides 
and on the border of woods. A typical nest, found May 18th, 1880, near 
Spring Creek, Harris County, and now in the Smithsonian Institution, was 
built in a blackberry bush, about two feet from the ground. It is a very 
beautiful structure. Exteriorly it is built of long, fine rootlets, pieces of 
snake-skin, dry leaves; near the rim it is almost entirely built of catkins 
and small pieces of cotton. It is lined with very fine rootlets of a light- 
brown color. The depth of the nest was 134 inches, diameter 234. The 
eggs, usually four in number, are of a light bluish-white. Only one brood 
is reared in a season.” 
248. Passerina cyanea. 
Indigo Bird. 
The nest is built in low bushes of leaves and grass. The eggs are 
four or five, white, with a bluish tinge, unspotted. They measure .75 by 
58. A nest in my collection contains three eggs which are thinly dotted 
at the larger end with reddish-brown. This is, however, rarely the case. 
249, Passerina amena. 
Lazuli Bunting. 
A nest with four eggs of this species, collected in San Gorgonio Pass, 
California, June 10, 1883, is in my collection. The nest is composed of 
fine strips of bark and lined with hair. It was placed in a clump of weeds 
one foot from the ground. The eggs are light-blue, unspotted, and are 
hardly distinguishable from those of the common Bluebird—probably a 
little more rounded—oval. The four eggs measure respectively: .81 by 
62, .83 by .64, .79 by .62, .83 by .64. | 
251. Passerina cris. 
Painted Bunting; Nonpareil. 
This species is a very common resident of the Southern States. It 
makes its appearance about the end of March or early in April, when the 
pleasant odor of many thousands of flowers now in bloom fills the air, 
It is extremely wild and shy—commences nesting early in May. Mr. 
