I02 THE CONDOR Vol. IX 



sight in what seemed to me a very exposed place, there being no leaves near it, 

 and the old scraggly tree seemed to afford poor protection. 



On that evening when I first found the nest, I watched until nearly dark and 

 finally left the male still building and the female catching insects. Not once had 

 she offered to assist in the nest building. At six A. m. the next morning the male 

 was at work, but the female was nowhere in sight. I was unable to stay long at 

 that time, but when I returned at nine-thirty the male was still working, tho there 

 was a longer interval between his coming than there had been in the early morn- 

 ing or the night before. 



His manner of approaching the tree was in a half or three-quarter circle. He 

 would come flying along on about a level with the tree top, and just before reach- 

 ing the tree would descend in a circular sweep, sometimes alighting on a twig near 

 the nest, sometimes landing in the nest itself. 



At twenty minutes to ten, when the male came, he deposited his mouthful of 

 fine material in the nest, then reached over and worked upon the outside. Having 

 arranged this to his satisfaction, he turned about in the nest to shape it; then, still 

 sitting squarely in it, he sang his low warbling song. It was scarcely more than a 

 whisper and had I not seen the throat move I might have doubted its coming from 

 a bird. Twice that morning I saw him sing on the nest. 



Shortly before ten the female bird appeared in the tree for the first time, to my 

 knowledge. She came from the top but did not circle as was the custom of the 

 male. Before she could reach the nest her mate drove her away. However, when 

 the male had gone, she slipped onto the nest with a mouthful, shaping it before she 

 left. Soon after this, both birds came at once and the female got the nest. The 

 male settled down beside her and both worked upon it. The material the female 

 brought at this time was long and looked like white sage. 



In an hour and a half that morning both birds came to the nest fourteen times, 

 the male nine and the female five times. The longest interval was thirty minutes, 

 the shortest three. This was one of the hottest mornings of the year, and at eleven 

 o'clock the sun beat down upon the nest. Both birds came panting and it was at 

 this time that work was slackened. 



After the nest was finished and the eggs laid, the birds for some unknown 

 reason deserted it. From the top of the Arroyo I could see that there were eggs in 

 the nest but could not tell how many. I^ater when I was sure that the nest was 

 deserted and I went to get a photograph I found it torn and the eggs gone. An 

 examination proved it to be made of fine gray material. There was one old piece of 

 soiled gray twine, some leaves and stems of white sage, and short, fine fibers. It 

 was a firm, compact, saucer-shaped nest. 



On June eleventh another male Phainopepla commenced building in a very 

 scraggly, open, pepper tree that grew in the Parkway on Avenue Sixty-six, just 

 across from my home. Tho from my porch I could watch their comings and go- 

 ings I could not see the nest plainly. There was no place where I could conceal 

 myself and I was so afraid that I would scare them away that I did not attempt to 

 watch at the nest as I had at the Arroyo one. However, I was able to see that, as 

 in the case of the other nest, the male did most of the building. The female helped 

 some, but the most of the time she was about on the wires in the neighborhood, 

 and nest-building concerned her not. The male had the same way of circling the 

 tree when he came to it as in the other case. 



I thought the material of this nest was finer than that of the other. Once the 

 male came into the yard and stripped the fibers off from a castor bean tree, and 

 twice I saw him taking something from the bark of the pepper tree. The nest 



