General Notes. 1 1 



New Mexico, during fall and winter. I met with them in small flocks 

 on the hill-sides bordering the barren plains, where a few stunted bunches 

 of grass, scattered weeds, the tree cactus, and thorny bushes occasionally 

 dotted the ground. The birds were very active, running about -with tail 

 steadilv erected at an angle of 45 , in an odd, easy, graceful manner 

 which readily attracted attention. When startled they flew to the top of a 

 bush, but quickly dropped again to the ground. I thought, as I saw them 

 running so swiftly, stopping now and then to pick up food or occasionally 

 to scratch the ground, that they were busily engaged in catching a small 

 kind of beetle I had noticed, but in dissecting four that I shot December 

 2 and 3, 1SS0, I found in their stomachs only small seeds and coarse 

 gravel. The measurements of the birds shot are as follows : — 



J Length. 6.20: extent. 9.50: wing. 3.00; tail, 2.60; tarsus. .So: bill. .40. 



$ Length, 6.50; extent. 9.50; wing. 3.00; tail, 3.00: tarsus. .80: bill. .40. 



cT Length. 6.50: extent, 9.75 : wing. 3. 10; tail. 3.00: tarsus. .So: bill, .40. 



$ Length. 6.00: extent. 9.00: wing. 2.75 ; tail. 2.65 : tarsus, .80: bill, .40. 



Iris, dark brown: bill, dusky, the base of the lower mandible pa'e blue. 

 Legs, dark-reddish brown : feet and claws black. — N. S. Goss. Neosho 

 Falls. Kansas. 



Peculiar Nidification of the Bobolink. — During the haying 

 season of 1S54, I found in a meadow where I was at work a nest of the 

 Bobolink {Dolichonyx oryzivoriis) occupying the space between four stalks 

 of a growing narrow dock (Riti>ic\ crispus). This nest was suspended 

 from four points of its circumference. 90 apart, to the four stalks of the 

 plant which grew from the same root. The bottom of the nest was about 

 six inches above the ground. It was constructed entirely of vegetable 

 material and consisted of two distinctly separate parts. A hemispherical 

 cup, in one piece of coarse but neatlv woven cloth, very strong and . 

 very light, was fastened to the living, growing supports by strong 

 fibres passing around each stalk above and below a joint and firmly woven 

 into the rim of the cup with some of the longer strings interlacing the 

 sides. Loups passed through the bottom of the cup were attached to 

 diagonal supports. The edge or rim of this cup was about half an inch 

 thick at the points of bearing and about one-fourth of an inch in the 

 quadrants. The texture just below the rim was closely woven and strongly 

 wrought, varying from one-eighth to one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness. 

 growing thinner gradually from the edge, and a small space in the lowest 

 part was of open work evidently designed to secure good and certain 

 ilra in age. 



In this hanging basket was an elaborate lining of very soft blades of 

 grass between which and the cup was an elastic padding. The woven cup 

 was about five inches in diameter and five inches deep, the padding about 

 half an inch thick, and the lining about the same thickness. The whole 

 structure, dock and nest, swayed in everv passing breeze but the nest was 

 so strongly fastened to the stalks and the plant so securely held by the 

 nest that it would have required .1 hurricane or tornado to have blown it 



awav. 



9- 



