644 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



hatched. Both parents feed them and carefully take away in 

 their bills all the excrement voided by the young. A second 

 brood of young is usually reared, the eggs being laid in early 

 June. Four eggs found at Orono, May 15, 1893, were in a 

 nest composed of dry grasses, fine bark strips and sedges, lined 

 with feathers. This nest was in a deserted Woodpecker hole 

 in a dead stub overhanging the Stillwater River, and seven 

 feet from the ground. The eggs are bluish white and measure 

 0.85 X 0.65, 0.85 x 0.65, 0.86 x 0.63, 0.86 x 0.65. I have 

 seen pure white eggs which were laid by this species and it 

 seems very likely that certain females habitually lay white 

 eggs. The birds usually return to the same locality season 

 after season. 



The food is rather varied, consisting however in spring and 

 summer primarily of insects. Much of the food is caught on 

 the wing, but a considerable portion is also gleaned from the 

 foliage of the trees and they even feed on the ground in open 

 gravelly sandy pastures and fields. Among the things I have 

 known them to eat are various species of Noctuidae, other small 

 moths, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, flies, winged ants, 

 ordinary ants, crickets, worms, grubs, caterpillars and mos- 

 quitoes. When feeding they spring from a perch into the air 

 to catch any passing insect, or hover before and quickly grasp 

 such as catch their eye on the foliage, bark or ground, or 

 more seldom feed while perched. When the supply of insect 

 food is scarce they will eat wild fruit and berries of different 

 kinds, more habitually during late fall and winter. Among 

 the fruits and berries eaten I can include blackberry, choke- 

 berry, thorn plums, woodbine berries, poison ivy berries, spike- 

 nai'd, dogwood and arrowwood berries. 



