FLYCATCHING THRUSHES. 21 



latter State it is not common. *** The eggs are of a very light 

 blue, paler than those of the other species. They measure .89 of 

 an inch in length by .66 in breadth. 



Mr. Ridgway states that he found the Rocky Mountain Bluebird 

 nesting in Virginia City m June, Its nests were built about the 

 old buildings, and occasionally in the unused excavations about the 

 mines. At Austin he also found it common in July, in similar lo- 

 calities. On the East Humboldt Mountains it was very numerous, 

 especially on the more elevated portions where it nested among 

 the rocks and, though more rarely, in the deserted excavations of 

 woodpeckers in the stunted pilion and cedar trees. He describes 

 it as generally very shy and difficult to obtain, seldom permitting 

 a very near approach. In its habits it is much less arboreal than 

 either S. inexicana or S. stalls, always preferring the open mountain 

 portions in the higher ranges of the Great Basin." — Baird, Brew- 

 er AWD Ridgw^ay's N. a. Birds, vol. i, pp. 67, 68. 



FAMILY Ptilogonatidag.— Fly catching 

 Thrushes. 



25. MYIADESTES TOWNSENDI. 



TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE. 



" In July, 1876, while rambling with my brother over the mount- 

 ains of Summit County, Colorado, it was my good fortune to find, at 

 an altitude of about ten thousand feet, the nest of Townsend's Fly- 

 Catcher [Myladestes toivusendi,) and as no description of its eggs has 

 as yet appeared, perhaps the following may not be uninteresting: t 

 The nest was very loosely, and, externally, shabbily built of long 

 dry grasses, straggling two feet or more below it. It was placed in 

 the upper bank o^ a miner's ditch (running from the Bear River, 

 above Breckenridge, to the Gold Run and Buffalo Flat diggings,) 

 and was partly concealed by overhanging roots ; yet it was render- 

 ed 80 conspicuous by the loose swaying material of which it was 

 composed, as well as by that which had become attached to the 

 overhanging roots during its construction, as to attract the eye of 

 an experienced collector when yet some rods away. *** The nest 

 contained four eggs, very closely resembling those of the Shrikes, 



tWiLBUB F. Lamb in QuUetin or the Nuttall Ornithological Club, a QuArtarly Jonrnal of Oml- 

 thology; Cambridge, Masa., July, 1877, pp. 77, 78. 



