BIRDS OF KANSAS. 419 



The birds, as a rule, nest early; often before the snow is off 

 the ground. Mr. Eugene P. Bicknell, in " Bulletin of the Nut- 

 tall Ornithological Club," gives the following minute descrip- 

 tion of a nest with three eggs, taken April 30th, 1875, at River- 

 dale, New York city: 



"The nest was placed in a tapering cedar of rather scanty 

 foliage, about eighteen feet from the ground, and was without 

 any single main support, being built in a mass of small, tangled 

 twigs, from which it was with difficulty detached. The situa- 

 tion could scarcely have been more conspicuous, being close to 

 the intersection of several roads (all of them more or less bor- 

 dered with ornamental evergreens), in plain sight of as many 

 residences, and constantly exposed to the view of passers by. 

 The materials of its composition were of rather a miscellaneous 

 character, becoming finer and more select from without inwards. 

 An exterior of spruce twigs, loosely arranged, surrounded a 

 mass of matted shreds of cedar bark, which formed the princi- 

 pal body of the structure, a few strips of the same appearing 

 around the upper border, the whole succeeded on the inside by 

 a sort of felting of finer material, which received the scanty 

 lining of black horse hair, fine rootlets, grass stems, pieces of 

 string and two or three feathers. This shallow felting of the in- 

 ner nest can apparently be removed intact from the body of the 

 structure, which, besides the above-mentioned materials, con- 

 tained small pieces of moss, leaves, grass, string, cottony sub- 

 stances and the green foliage of cedar. The nest measured 

 internally two and one-half inches in diameter by over one and 

 a quarter in depth; being in diameter externally about four in- 

 ches, and rather shallow in appearance. 



"The fresh eggs are in ground color of a decided greenish 

 tint, almost immaculate on the smaller end, but on the opposite 

 side with irregular spots and dottings of lavender brown of 

 slightly varying shades, interspersed with a few heavy surface 

 spots of dark purple brown. There is no approach in the ar- 

 rangement of these to a circle, but between the apex of the 

 larger end and the greatest diameter of the egg is a fine, hair- 

 like surface line; in two examples it forms a complete though 



