26 NOTES ON THE 
the morning or towards evening, as they are engaged in the 
structure of their nests. These are constructed of such mater- 
ials as abound about them, usually reeds, rushes, swamp 
grasses, and moss, and are woven with considerable skili. 
They are quite uniformly placed on floating debris, consisting 
of similar materials to that employed in the structure of the 
nests, although placed occasionally on a buoy of wood or bark. 
The water in which these masses float is commonly from three 
to four feet in depth, and completely surrounded by reeds and 
wild rice. Breeding in communities, it is no uncommon thing 
to find half a dozen nests very near to each other upon the 
same float, and a single nest on one so small as to forbid the 
presence of another. Considerable numbers build by the 25th 
of May, as I have eggs I obtained before the end of the month, 
but the larger part of them are deposited after the first of 
June. : 
They lay from two to three eggs—occasionally but one—of a 
smoky-yellow color, thoroughly splotched all over with dark, 
umber-brown, more thickly in an undefined ring around the 
larger end. 
During the breeding period very little is seen of them, but 
when the young are sufficiently developed to fly, they may be 
seen in great numbers flying over not only these reedy marshes, 
ponds and lakes, but more especially over the dry pastures, 
hayfields and wheatfields, where insects and grasshoppers are 
most abundant. 
Silent, and apparently without suspicion, flitting here and 
there like the swallows, often very near without seeming to 
see one observing them, although he may have a gun in his 
hand at the time, they spend most of their time in quest of 
food—that universal stimulus to motion for all animate nature. 
Few are seen in the country later than the 15th of August, 
and then invariably it is the adult plumage. I have no record 
of their presence later than the 19th of August. 
In his Birds of the Northwest, p. 708, Coues says: ‘‘They 
(the eggs) had to be closely looked after, for they were laid 
directly on the moist matting, without any nest in any instance.” 
This observation having been made along the borders of my 
special survey, and in the month of June, by so eminent a 
naturalist, surprised me greatly until I received a communi- 
cation from Mr. KE. W. Nelson, of Chicago, now of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, who assured me that he had observed the 
same thing in Cook county, where he resided, but only when 
