240 PASSERES. FRINGILLAD^. 



followed. By and bye they ceased that melody, 

 and one took to a strain consisting of about a dozen 

 rapid repetitions of the same note, ending with one 

 elevated note, with a jerking abruptness. This 

 strain he repeated several times. 



About the middle of April, a pair of Blue Quits 

 built a nest on one of the topmost branches of a 

 high fiddlewood in the yard of Bluefields house. 

 The tree was much infested with that parasite called 

 Old man's beard, large bunches of which grew on most 

 of the limbs and boughs, so numerously as to touch 

 each other in long successions. Two of these con- 

 tiguous bunches the birds had managed to separate, 

 either by picking away portions, or by pushing them 

 apart, so as to open a large hollow, and in this they 

 built a very snug domed nest. It was globular in 

 form, about as large as an infant's head, with an 

 opening in one side, composed of dry grass, the 

 dried stems of the Tillandsia, tendrils of passion- 

 flower, bits of rag, profusely intermixed with cotton 

 and the down of plants; yet these soft substances 

 were not used to line the structure, the grass only 

 appearing in the inside. Perhaps it was not finish- 

 ed, for the birds were passing in and out, and thus 

 betrayed its existence, for so identified was it in ap- 

 pearance with the bunches around, that but for this 

 ingress and egress, and the little opening, I could 

 not have detected it. I sent up a lad to examine 

 it, but in so doing, he partially broke the branch, 

 causing it to hang down; and this I presume 

 awakened suspicion, for the birds deserted it, and 

 in a few days I had it taken down. It was empty. 



