A.A.2 Ray, Fortnight Oft the Farallones. \qc.\. 



articles would do credit to some fabled jackdaw, and consists 

 as follows : 



Also considerable dislocated nesting material, as weed stems, grass, etc. 



The birds in this case had easy access to all the little bits of 

 material that accumulate around dwellings ; but even then, what 

 a vast amount of patience and labor, as well as perception, it 

 required to find and transport the 1665 listed objects, to say 

 nothing of building the nest itself ! This was composed of the 

 bird's favorite substance, excelsior packing, together with a 

 few weeds and grasses and bits of cotton and rabbit fur tucked in 

 decoratively here and there, and measured 5J inches over all, 

 while the cavity was 3 inches across by li inches deep. 



Of all the nests we noted, in no case did we see one where the 

 birds did not, to a greater or less degree, exercise their strange 

 habit of paving the pathway. While various theories have been 

 advanced to account for it, one cause, which seems to me to more 

 nearly hit the mark is the desire to overcome dampness. Those 

 nests with earthen floors, of varying moistness, have much more 

 pretentious stone walks than cliff-nests which are comparatively 

 dry, although it is true that about the latter there is generally but 

 little space for the wrens to cover. But perhaps the best argument 

 in support of this theory is that the birds before building the nest 

 first line the passage, as I found that stones were equally deep 

 below completed nests, and I also noticed that nests in the first 

 stages of construction had the stone-ways already finished. 



