THE BIRDS OF HAITI AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 365 



one side. This nest is constructed of weed stems, filaments of moss, 

 grasses, and small leaves, mingled with occasional masses of spider 

 webbing, lined with softer materials of the same kind. The nest 

 wall is thickened at the side below the opening to form a sort of 

 threshold being only half as thick elsewhere. The two elliptical 

 eggs are dull white heavily marked with suffused markings of verona 

 brown which while heaviest at the large end cover the entire sur- 

 face concealing most of the light background. One of the eggs is 

 broken so that it can not be measured, the other is seemingly a 

 " runt " egg measuring only 14.9 by 11.2 mm. Another nest was 

 collected by Abbott at Lajana, Dominican Republic, on the south 

 side of Samana Bay. This structure was placed at the tip of a limb 

 in a thorny bush growing in a cleft in a limestone cliff a meter and a 

 half above the sea. It is generally similar to the one described 

 above but is made of coarser materials with very little spider web- 

 bing. It contained one egg colored like those described above but 

 with the spotting confined mainly to the larger end of the egg with 

 only scattered markings below. This egg measures 16.0 by 12.5 mm. 

 Abbott remarks that nests of this bird are often suspended on lianas 

 swinging over paths or open places in the woods from two to three 

 meters from the ground. Wetmore found a nest May 11, 1927 at 

 San Lorenzo, Dominican Republic suspended at the tip of a limb a 

 little more than a meter from the ground in jungle on a steep hillside. 

 The nest was a ball of grasses and bark shreds with a smooth, 

 round entrance beneath. It contained three hard-set eggs only one 

 of which could be properly preserved. This has the white back- 

 ground almost entirely obscured by suffused markings of natal brown 

 and measures 17.5 by 13.0 mm. Bond records that he found the 

 honey-creeper breeding for the entire period of his stay on the island 

 from January to June 1928. 



The honey creeper regularly uses the old nests as roosts. At the 

 home of Dr. George F. Freeman in Port-au-Prince at the end of 

 March and during April Wetmore observed one of these birds on a 

 number of occasions as it retired for the night. Almost invariably 

 it flew up from dense brush across the street to rest with flitting 

 wings on a telephone wire for a few minutes and then suddenly 

 pitched down into a casuarina and entered a nest six meters from 

 the ground near the tip of a drooping limb where it was distin- 

 guished with difficulty from the abundant epiphytes that clothed the 

 branches about it. 



The honey-creeper measures from 100 to 112 mm. in length and 



has a short tail and a slender, strongly decurved bill. It is sooty 



brown above with a white line over the eye and a white spot on the 



wing, dark gray on the throat and foreneck, and yellow on the 



2134—31 24 



