398 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
species reaches the Saskatchewan about the beginning of May 
and does not pass beyond Lat. 57°. It associates itself with the 
other blackbirds and does great injury to sprouting grain. 
(Richardson.) North to Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River ; | 
common. (Ross.) nae 
BREEDING NoTes.—June 11th, 1882 : Went inthe morning with 
two brothers to the lake in the sand-hills east of De Winton; saw 
there large numbers of marsh terns and various kinds of black- 
birds. I was unable, from the depth of the water, to reach the 
place where the terns seemed to be nesting, but found the nest of 
the red-winged blackbird in a few twigs that projected about a 
foot above the water, here three feet deep, and some ten feet 
from the shore. I saw the female leave the nest, so that the 
identification is good. The male did not put in an appearance at 
all. The nest is very deep, neat and strong; it is suspended from 
about a dozen upright twigs and is built much like that of a Bal- 
timore oriole, but entirely of grass. The eggs, four in number, 
were all fresh; one was 1 by +}, pale blue, and scrawled over with 
most curious hieroglyphics in brown-black ink; the others were 
similar. (Zhompson-Seton.) Builds in bushes and low trees 
around Ottawa, Ont. Its nest is composed of coarse, fibrous 
material, strips of rushes and marsh grass; _ lined with fine grass. 
_ Eggs, four to six. Pale blue, dotted, blotched and scrawled with 
blackish-brown. (G.R. White.) Breeding abundantly in all pools 
throughout eastern Assiniboia, but becoming scarcer to the west. 
They always bred in communities. At Brandon, Man., nests 
were found in willows (Salix longifolia) and at Crane Lake the 
same species was nesting in Scripus lacustris or bullrushes. In 1895 
the same species was breeding in a thick growth of snowberry 
(Symphoricarpus occidentalis) on dry ground, at the forks of Old 
Wives’ Creek, Assa. Nest of leaves and stems of grasses, lined 
with the dried stems of Eleocharis palustris. At 12-Mile Lake, 
near Wood Mountain, Assa., they were nesting in cat-tails, and 
at Sucker Creek, south of the Cypress Hills in an old growth of 
Carex aristata. (Macoun.) On June 18th, 1892, at Indian Head, 
Assa., I waded out into a large slough that had a lot of rushes, 
(Scirpus lacustris) growing init near the middle. In a few minutes I 
saw ten nests. Three of them had young, half-grown, and others 
young just hatched. Two nests with four eggs each took. This 
was at ga.m., and at 8 p.m. I prepared to blow the eggs. On 
