4^ ^V^^^r^' AND EGGS OF BIRDS. 



grasses, feathers, wool, mosses, etc., and laid from 1 2 to 16 eggs ; 

 and we learned little more until Mr. Scnnett found it very 

 common near Hidalgo, Texas, but was unable to obtain eggs. 

 This was in 1S77 ; the following year he had better success, 

 which he describes to me in the ensuing letter : 



Arriving at Lomita Ranche. on the Lower Rio Grande, April 8, iSjSj 

 one of the first familiar birds to greet me was this titmouse. It was 

 one of the very few birds found in numbers last season whose eggs I 

 did not obtain, the nearest to it being discovery of nest with young. It 

 was essential to find their nests without delay on account of their com- 

 mencing to breed earlier than any other species found in the locality. 

 Orders were given to assistants and Mexicans to shoot no birds of this 

 species, but to search diligently the trunks and stubs of trees for their 

 nests. In a few days, several nests were found, but, to my disappoint- 

 ment, all contained young. I was upon the gi-ound some ten days ear- 

 lier than last year; but the season being also earlier I was placed in 

 about the same predicament as then, as regards the finding of eggs of 

 this species. After such disappointments a naturalist can imagine the 

 pleasure I received, when, on April 20. my assistant, Mr. Sanford, placed 

 upon my table a nest, five young and a perfect egg, together with 

 the parent bird caught on the nest. The chicks I preserved in spirits, 

 while the egg, being infertile, was easily prepared and, with the nest, is 

 in my collection. This, then. I believe, is the first thoroughly identified 

 egg brought to our notice. The bird caught on the nest was a male, 

 and other males were shot having bare and wrinkled bellies, thus show- 

 ing that both sexes share in incubation and the care of the young. 



The nest was some six feet from the ground in a limb of a half-dead 

 willow which was leaning on some brush, and was discovered by the 

 birds flying into it. It was situated in the excavated hollow of the limb, 

 some ten or twelve inches from the opening. It is composed chiefly of 

 vegetable wool, mixed with which are strips of soft inner bark and now 

 and then bits of snake-skins, the whole being much firmer and thicker 

 than is usual with birds that build in hollow stubs. Of the other nests 

 found with young and left undisturbed, all, with one exception, were sit- 

 uated higher — the distance varying from four to twelve feet from the 

 ground. I found them to occupy usually the abandoned holes of the 

 Texas wood^itecker {Picus scalaris) , but sometimes in split forks. They 

 prefer living trees to dead ones, and in every case of my experience the 

 opening had to be enlarged, sometimes with great difliculty, before exam- 

 ination of the nest could be had. The localities mostly selected for nest- 

 ing are groves or open timber free from undergrowth, whether in the old 

 lagoon-beds which receive the overflow from the river or on the driest 



