I H ^^ESTS AND EGGS OF BIRDS. 



sprinkled a mass of purplish and reddish specks. Minot says that 

 he has seen eggs "thickly and coarsely blotched at the greater 

 end with reddish brown, these markings being sometimes com- 

 bined" with the normal type of fine dottings, and Belding men- 

 tions "a prominent ring" on Californian specimens; but the 

 variation among the eggs of this species is unusually small. 



68. THE ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER. 



HELMINTHOPHAGA CELATA {Say) Baird. 

 Orange-colored Vermivora or "Warbler. 



The habitat of this bird is given as " North American at large, 

 but especially the 7vestern and middle provinces . . . Var. lutes- 

 cens along the Pacific coast. Its breeding range appears to be 

 nearly coextensive with the whole area of its distribution in the 

 west, where the mountain chains afford the elevation that answers 

 to increase of latitude as far as the nidification of birds is con- 

 cerned." 



Nests with eggs were taken in the middle of June on the Yukon 

 and at Great Slave lake, by Mr. Robert Kennicott ; and near Hay- 

 wood, Alameda county, Cal., by Dr. Cooper on May 25. Those 

 from Great Slave lake seemed large for the size of the bird — as is 

 usual in ground-builders — having an external diameter of four 

 inches and a height of 2 1-2, and appearing as if made of two or 

 three distinct fabrics, one within the other, of nearly the same 

 materials. The external portions of these nests were composed 

 almost entirely of long coarse strips of bark loosely interAvoven 

 with a few dry grasses and stems of plants ; within, a more elab- 

 orately interwoven structure of finer dry grasses and mosses, 

 warmly lined with hairs and fur of small animals. The usual sit- 

 uation was in a clump of low bushes, often in the side of a bank, 

 and always concealed by the dry leaves. Nests from Alaska are 

 more compactly built and smaller. The one described by Cooper 

 from near San Francisco was built on a steep slope in the woods, 

 among the fallen leaves. 



The eggs are very finely dotted all over — thickly about the larger 



