iS93-l General Notes. 207 



covered with pin-feathers of a dark brown color. Their bills were perhaps 

 a quarter of an inch long, wide at the base, and in general shape not un- 

 like the bill of a Dendroica, but more depressed. 



Taking a station near the tree I watched the nest for two hours (from 

 ii a.m. to i p.m.). During this period the female visited it three times. 

 At her first coming she fed the young, and after brooding them for forty- 

 five minutes, buzzed about in the tree (not once leaving it) for about a 

 minute. She then returned to the nest and fed the young again, one of 

 them twice in succession. Immediately afterward she flew oft" out of sight 

 and was absent sixteen minutes. At the end of this time she came direct- 

 ly to the nest, fed each young bird once, brooded both for six minutes, 

 and then again flew away not reappearing during the remaining twenty 

 minutes of my stay. 



Her manner of feeding her offspring was as follows: Alighting on the 

 edge of the nest, her tail pressed firmly against its outer side in the man- 

 ner of a Woodpecker, her body erect, she would first look nervouslv 

 around, then thrust at least three quarters of the total length of her bill 

 down between the upraised open mandibles of the young bird. Next she 

 would shake her head violently as if disgorging something; then, with 

 their bills glued tightly together, both birds would remain, for the space 

 of several seconds, perfectly immovable save for a slight, rapid, pulsating 

 or quivering motion of the mother's throat. The actual contact of the bills 

 lasted once four seconds, once six seconds, and twice eleven seconds, the 

 time being taken with a stop watch. The male did not appear at all. 

 The young were perfectly silent. The mother in brooding them kept 

 moving restlessly about as if she were trampling on them. 



The close and prolonged contact of bills, the shaking of the mother's 

 head, the subsequent quivering motion of her throat, and, above all, the 

 fact that after sitting on the nest nearly an hour she fed the young a 

 second time without once leaving the tree in the interim, convinced me 

 that the method of feeding was by regurgitation. 



The character of the food thus supplied I could not, of course, ascertain 

 without killing and dissecting one of the young, a proceeding which mv 

 kind-hearted host would certainly not have sanctioned. 



The observations above detailed were made at a distance of about ten 

 yards from a point only a few feet below the level of the nest, and with 

 the aid of a powerful field glass. As the day was clear and the light strong 

 I could see the birds nearly as well as if I held the nest in my hand. — 

 William Brewster, Cambridge, A/ass. 



Remarks on certain species of Dendrornis. — Since my paper on Den- 

 dromis^tas been printed, the American Museum of Natural History has 

 received from the Vienna Museum the three species mentioned in a foot- 

 note to page 163, viz.: D. ocellata Spix, D. spixi Less., and D. elega?i$ 

 Pelz., and I am therefore able to publish my conclusions in this number 

 of ; The Auk.' 



